Caltech, Japan, and Stockholm
Shortly
after accepting a teaching position at Caltech, Feynman was offered an opportunity
to attend an international meeting of theoretical physicists in Japan. Delighted
by the chance to visit a foreign nation and to witness what Japan's new work
had been, he attended. After he returned, he began work on quantum electrodynamics,
which was a budding field at the time and very chaotic. It was what he would
later win a Nobel Prize for. It was also in this time that he acquired a talent
for visual arts; painting and sketching. Two years after arriving at Caltech,
he married Mary Lou, but it was a hasty marriage, and did not last.
In the early 1960s, he was requested by the department to help renovate the lower curriculum in the department. While this would divert him from his research, which he treasured, he enjoyed the contact with young minds and accepted the task. With the help of Leighton and Sands, over three years they compiled the Feynman Lectures on Physics, which is a staple text in Caltech to this day. During this time he met Gweneth, from Great Britain. She would later become his third and final wife, who stayed with him until his death. In 1965 he received the Nobel Prize for physics, for his work in quantum electrodynamics, which he shared with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger. Although he usually avoided situations requiring pomp and superfluity, he accepted this award with his usual grace.
Shortly after, Feynman was diagnosed with cancer, a kind which grew a tumor in his abdomen. Although the tumor was removed in time to save him, it had already done significant damage to his internal organs, including entirely crushing one of his kidneys. Although the operation saved him, he was to suffer relapses in the future, eventually to his demise.