Richard Feynman, born on May 11, 1918 to Lucille and
Melville Feynman, is remembered for many things by many people. He
was Physicist, a Mathematician, a Noble Laureate in Physics, he worked
at Los Alamos constructing the first atomic bomb, he probed the Challenger
shuttle disaster, made new paths into Quantum Mechanics and Electrodynamics
through Path Integrals and Feynman Diagrams, he was a teacher, a husband
and a father. He was all these things and more, yet he was still just
a man, like everyone else, and he liked to play the bongo drums.
Feynman attended MIT where he received his bachelor
if science degree and then Princeton for his Ph.D. It was during his
time at Princeton that Feynman married his first wife, his high school
sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum. Arline was already ill with tuberculosis
at the time, and the young newlyweds could not even kiss. In 1942
the young couple left for Los Alamos where 24 year old Feynman would
be made group leader in the theoretical division. Eventually Arline
was admitted into the Albuquerque hospital where she eventually died
in 1945. Feynman was very distraught.
Feynman took several teaching positions over the following
years, ending up at CalTech where he would spend the rest of his career.
Feynman married two more time, in 1952 he married
Mary Louise Bell, and in 1960 he married Gweneth Howarth. They had
a son, Carl, and adopted a daughter, Michelle.
During his time at CalTech Feynman agreed to teach
a two-year course of introductory physics to freshman students. The
lectures were recorded, transcribed and photographs were taken of
all the blackboards. From these lectures three books, The Feynman
Lectures on Physics, were published. Also published were two books
by Ralph Leighton,Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! in 1985
and What Do You Care What Other People Think? in 1988, both
highly enjoyable books to read that capture the personal side of Feynman
that he was so infamous for.
Feynman died February 15, 1988 at the age of 69 from stomach cancer.