Los Alamos and Beyond
While performing graduate studies at Princeton, Feynman decided to find ways to serve his country. While the war began to hit full stride, a call came out for physicists, to win the race for the A-bomb against the Germans. Feynman responded to the call and joined some of America's greatest minds at Los Alamos research base. Unfortunately, it was around this time that his wife, Arlene, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was able to keep her nearby in Albuquerque, where she could reside in a hospital to provide her care. Los Alamos proved to be a significant shift for Feynman, who was not only amidst some of the greats of the time, but also working nonstop on a research project. He did, however, find sufficient time to occupy himself with a new hobby. Recreation was limited at Los Alamos, and in his spare time Feynman found something of sufficient variety and complexity to occupy his attention; safecracking. In his spare time he practiced on the various safes and filing cabinets in Los Alamos, because almost everything there was sensitive information and was therefore stored in a container with a combination lock. This skill earned him a quirky repute amongst his peers, whom he would occasionally leave messages inside their own safes.
As
the Manhattan Project neared completion, Arlene's tuberculosis reached its
final stages. She died in the hospital shortly before the first nuclear detonation.
Feynman saw the project through to its completion, and World War II began
to draw to a close. Feynman received an offer to teach at Cornell, and accepted.
While this proved to be a good move for him, he began to hit a slump. It was
not a lack of skill or talent, but closer to burnout; a lack of self-confidence.
He found himself relatively unable to apply himself, because the tasks at
hand were sizeable, and he didn't think they should be that hard; obviously
he wasn't working as well as he should have been. This built gradually until
he received an offer to work at the Institute for Advanced Study, a think-tank
of the time. Knowing his aversion to purely theoretical work, they even offered
him a position teaching part-time at Princeton University. He found it incredible
that they could expect such a quantity of work from him, and he found it so
surprising that he eventually concluded that he could (and would) perform
only to his expectations, because only he knew his own true capacity. This
provided a great relief for Feynman, and cleared his mind to better pursue
his work.
While
he was teaching at Cornell he was requested to give once-a-week seminars in
Buffalo. Feynman set to this with his usual vigor, and found himself usually
with an evening to kill in Buffalo, which he usually spent in a bar, relaxing
and acquanting himself with the locals. This landed him in another situation
adding to his reputation; one night he was involved in a brief barfight. Also,
for a summer, he visited Brazil, teaching classes and living in Rio de Janerio.
While there, he joined a samba school, a sort of musical street preforming
troupe, and was able to play in the Carnaval (Feynman is front row center
in this picture). Afterwards, Feynman continued to teach at Cornell, when
he moved to teach at Caltech in 1951. He was in a brief turmoil in choosing
between Caltech and Cornell, but he decided one day when, while at Caltech,
he was flagged down by three different people for different departments, all
to tell him the latest discoveries, something which rarely happened at Cornell.
Therefore, he stayed at Caltech.