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Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
Grand Central Publishing Product Details |
Product Description
Einstein's Dreams meets Tuesdays with Morrie in Leonard Mlodinow's touching memoir about his mentor, the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman. As a young physicist, Leonard Mlodinow looked for guidance from his mentor, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. Drawing on transcripts from their meetings during their time together at Cal Tech, Mlodinow shares Feynman's provocative thoughts and observations. At once a moving portrait of a friendship and an affecting account of Feynman's final, creative years, FEYNMAN'S RAINBOW celebrates the inspiring legacy of one of the greatest thinkers of our time.
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Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 2004-05-01
- Label: Grand Central Publishing
- Studio: Grand Central Publishing
- ISBN: 0446692514
- Average Customer Review:
 based on 50 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #62846
Avg. Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Walking with a giant 2008-10-15
Comment: Caltech is the home of some of the best minds in physics. Most notable physicists on its faculty included Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann; both are Nobel laureates. The author narrates in simple words his casual interactions with Richard Feynman when he (author) was a freshman-faculty member at the physics department. Feeling unsettled in the world of giants, he looks for guidance and direction to establish his career, and in the process learns some basic lessons about being a person, and a physicist. Feynman is a legend in physics world, and was considered as Einstein of modern times until his death in 1988. He was known for discovery of quantum electrodynamics, a theory of the electromagnetic force that governs the behavior of electrons that orbit the nucleus of the atom.
Academics is a dog-eat-dog world; if you can't create something new in physics, you could be walking out of the door sooner than latter. This is true at all top colleges and research institutions. This is painfully clear to a new faculty member, and the author expresses this fear in spite of the fact that his PhD thesis at UC Berkeley is a significant contribution, in his own rights, in physics. Feynman was the first one to detect this unsettling behavior; at that time Feynman was 63 and terminally ill with cancer. Feynman loved life, dressed and spoke like a blue-collar Joe, with no sophistication in his style. He lounged around strip clubs to do his physics, experimented with controlled substances and once crashed into a wedding party to freeload on buffet in casual cloths when all the invited guests were dressed in suits and dresses. He didn't drink and he was faithful to his wife. Both Feynman and Gell-Mann looked down on biologists, chemists, and physicists who applied physics rather than discover fundamental laws. Seminars at Caltech had the reputation for its brutality because Gell-Mann could nag the speaker for the tiniest point, and if the seminar is uninteresting he would read a newspaper. Feynman was equally brash and unwilling to respect sloppy ideas in physics. The combination of Gell-Mann and Feynman were highly intimidating. Feynman was diligent in avoiding any activity that he did not find interesting. He could be abrupt and abrasive. Gell-Mann was a show-off; he was a know-it-all type. Feynman and Gell-Mann were both friends and enemies.
The author briefly describes early work done on String theory at Caltech by John Schwartz: This was the time when String theory was at its infancy. He gets discouraged to work in this field by the negative reaction of both Gell-Mann and Feynman. He seriously considers working with Schwartz but his own doubts about the theory forces the author to loose confidence in himself. Sometimes the author feels "small" to walk on the footsteps of giants, but he also shows that great physicists are also human and do crazy things like normal people.
1. Some Time with Feynman (Penguin Press Science)
2. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
3. Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace
4. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)
5. Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character
6. Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher
7. The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (Helix Books)
8. What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character
9. The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex
10. Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in Twentieth-Century Physics
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Another piece of the puzzle 2008-08-31
Comment: I enjoyed this book immensely and feel that it adds another facet to an overall portrait of Richard Feynman. No one book is ever going to have it all, the physics, the bio, the insight, but this adds a very appealing view from one who was at least on the same floor at CalTech as Feynman himself. As the Zen Master said, it is when something is dying that it is the greatest teacher and in this book Feynman is dying but he's going out the same way as he lived and there is a lot to be learned from him. He gives the author a push toward living in his own skin and finding his own path and does it with the directness that always characterized Feynman. Words to live by? When Feynman tells Leonard that if he's unhappy he should think about that but that when he's happy just let it be and on't question it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, but not enough "book material" 2008-04-13
Comment: I would only read it if you want another view at Feynman's life. Keep in mind that half the book is autobiographical and not too interesting
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: What do you care what other people think? 2008-01-02
Comment: Mlodinow's book is more about himself than about Feynman, whom he admits he hardly knew. There are no insights here into Feynman's character, or his personality, or the incredible story of his marriage to Arline. Nope, this book is mostly the author boasting about graduating early, writing a well-respected thesis, and being expected to excel. It should have been called "Mlodinow's Rainbow" but I guess that wouldn't have sold as many copies, would it?
Don't get me wrong. The book is entertaining enough, and short enough (171 pages of large type) to be quickly devoured in a single sitting. Just don't expect there to be anything of substance about the name in the title, which is obviously a marketing ploy.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Physics from Below 2007-12-20
Comment: The book jacket made me worry that the book was going to be a namby pamby "Tuesdays With Morrie" affair :-) because the jacket said something about "a young physicist [author Mlodinow] trying to find his place in the world, and .. the famous, old, and dying colleague whose wisdom helped him". Luckily, "Feynman's Rainbow" turns out to be more fun and light and memorable and show-don't-tell than the Morrie book, although there is a slight resemblance.
The best feature of the book is that it lets the reader feel what it's like for an "ordinary" person to be around greatness and around history. There are plenty of serious books about the giants, and they might even include a few quotes from neighbors or secretaries about the giants, but this book actually lets the reader *feel* what it's like to live with the great, day after day, in an interesting Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern way as described below in (1). In that sense, the fact that the book is actually about the author and only peripherally about Feynman is part of it's charm. So, the main character's (author's) "I'm finding myself" phase of life is slightly tedious in the book, true, but the tedium actually works to give a being-there/slice-of-life appeal, and I wouldn't complain about it. For example, the slumping main character's (author's) slight confusedness and whininess makes a context that allows Feynman to be impatient with him in (a more gentle version of) Don-Corleone's ", what's the matter with you?" way.
(1) My favorite parts of the book are actually the stuff in the background of the book's story--e.g., backdrop stuff like the sad-sack string-theory nutjob (!) Schwarz who was pitied and ridiculed by everyone (even grad students) at Caltech and who was allowed to remain on the faculty (but with no tenure) only due to the support of his single high-profile supporter in the Physics faculty. Such backdrop parts of the book have a lovely Rosencrantz & Guildenstern feel to them because they invert the usual ordering of the big picture (e.g., string theory) and the little picture (Mlodinow's mundane concerns). Stephen Wolfram also makes a cameo. Such backdrop parts may be especially enjoyable to readers who have some existing knowledge of physics. (Physics = Hamlet, in the analogy.)
(2) Other great not-quite-foreground parts of the book involve Feynman, of course, and/or Murray Gell-Mann. Feynman is familiar to most readers. But what an interesting guy is Gell-Mann! The book made me want to read his books and biography next. His relationship with Feynman is so awesome and is discussed at various points in the book. The single-sentence (or so) description of how Gell-Mann and Feynman spent their time together in Feynman's last months is very touching, like something out of a movie. A great, great movie or book can be made on the yin and yang and the relationship between these two guys. [Maybe one has already been made; I don't know.] The relationship in the hypothetical movie would resemble that portrayed between Salieri and Mozart in the movie "Amadeus", but with Salieri's being just as much of a genius (but of an opposite type) as Mozart, and with Salieri's being mostly not evil. Pitch to the studios: "'Grumpy Old Men', starring Amadeus and a genius version of Salieri". :-)
(3) And what makes the book work, that can keep things light, are the goofy little anecdotes. Not knee-slappingly funny or anything, but nice. Here's an example. Feynman and the author, both hungry and casually-dressed, see a wedding reception at Caltech's Athenaeum and crash in to get fed. When asked whether they are from the bride's side or the groom's side, Feynman replies, "We represent the Physics Department". Ha ha. By the way, the quote evinces a great, jaunty attitude and therefore is a good slogan for life (that anyone can adopt, with appropriate substitution for "Physics Department").
Finally, let's note that the book is breezily good but should not be read with high expectations because it is not and does not try to be the "great" type of book.
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