Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life

Rating:
Summary: Advice to a Young Physicist
Review: There were plenty of famous physicists in the twentieth century, but none as endearing and downright funny as Richard Feynman. If you have ever read his wonderful memoir _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_, you know plenty about the humorous side of the serious physicist, the man who originated quantum electrodynamics as well as plenty of other accomplishments within his field, to say nothing of playing the bongos. Now there is an unusual memoir, a tribute from a young physicist who came within Feynman's orbit at Caltech in the early 1980s. _Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life_ (Warner Books) by Leonard Mlodinow gives us another snapshot of Feynman, which would always be welcome, but this one is special. Mlodinow was starting up to be an academic physicist, and got to get advice from Feynman on the task, as well as on what is important in life. Mlodinow presciently taped many of the sessions, and got around to transcribing them only recently. Feynman has lots to teach us still, even if we aren't physicists.

Part of the attraction of this little volume is that while it is about Feynman, it is also about Mlodinow's discomfort as a whiz kid brought in to work at Caltech. He was glad to get the appointment, but also intimidated. "These people at Caltech might actually expect something of me." He didn't know how to start, and floundered for months, until he decided to talk with Feynman, just down the hall, about what he thought about string theory. "Look," Feynman said dismissively, "If you really believed in string theory, you wouldn't come here asking me. You'd come here _telling_ me." The lesson was, find something you believe in and go to work. In Feynman's view, it wouldn't do to work on just anything. If you weren't working on something beautiful, and something you believed in, then the work wouldn't be fun. And fun was essential: "For me, physics is more fun than anything else or I couldn't be doing it." Feynman isn't the only curious character in this memoir. Next door to Mlodinow's office is another Nobel winner, Murray Gell-Mann who had brought the unifying theory of quarks to subatomic particles. John Schwarz, working alone for many years, finally brings out string theory. Stephen Wolfram appears, before "Mathematica" and his own rewrite of science, to eat a pound of rare roast beef. There is also a good deal of science in the book, a brief summary of where physics stood at the end of the millennium.

Mlodinow had a hobby of writing during the time, writing screenplays, which some of his fellow physicists must have thought beneath him. Feynman didn't influence him directly to go into writing, but at least partially because of Feynman's teaching about going after the work that is fun, he wound up writing rather than doing physics. He left Caltech to write an acclaimed history of geometry, and even scripts for _Star Trek_. It is obvious he absorbed the lessons he has generously shared with us in this amusing book, for he left Caltech hoping that he could do something Feynman would admire. "And then I thought, no, even better, I hope that someday I will write something that I would admire." Very nice work, Mr. Feynman.

Rating:
Summary: To thine own nucleus be true . . .
Review: These reviews are longer than this book, which is 171 pages long and written by a physicist who later became a writer for "Star Trek." It's about discovery. Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann each had a different approach to physics, and a different way of looking at the world. In the end, Gell-Mann taught Feynman string theory because, despite his love for theory, Gell-Mann's instincts had led him to recognize that theory's potential when everyone else thought of it as a joke, while Feynman's instincts, unerring in so many cases, had in this one instance, apparently, been wrong.

The rivalry between Gell-Mann and Feynman, and their apparent reconciliation at the end of Feynman's life, embodies the narrator's personal struggle and that conflict's eventual resolution. Unsure of his abilities, seeking a problem on which to work, Mlodinow learns that, in both physics and life, you find your path by heeding, not "customs and rules," but your own internal voice. That voice may lead to a "big picture" such as a unified field theory, or to the physics of a rainbow or a mental voyage on the U.S.S. Enterprise. Yet all discoveries, both large and small, scientific and uniquely personal, come about as the result following your passion. Mldodinow asked Feynman: what problem should I pursue? Feynman taught him that the answer to this question was one that he had always already known.

This book does not take one hour to read: it takes two. Both of them are worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Not a bad book, but quite misleading
Review: This is a reasonable book. It is a good read, and it is entertaining, especially to those interested in the daily workings of a major physics departments. The advice Mlodinow received from Feynman on life and work is very useful to everyone who reads it.

However the book is also quite misleading. First, the title and back cover suggest strongly that this is a book about Feynman. It isn't. It is about a junior faculty member who on occasion would talk to Feynman. Second, the book itself goes into great detail describing the people at Caltech, but then has a disclaimer that except for the exact quotes from Feynman, most of the characters and stories are not accurate. Several people have been combined to produce characters, others sound fictional.

The third criticism is that Mlodinow hypes himself too much. Throughout the book he talks about his great research into infinit dimensions and quantum optics. He talks about being well known for his graduate thesis, and for correcting mistakes in well known theories. However amongst other physicists who were active at the time, almost no one has actually heard of him. And looking through citations in research papers from the era reveal very few references to his work.

It is worth reading, but as a biography of Mlodinow, not as an accurate historical portrayal of Feynman, Gell-Mann, or Caltech.

Rating:
Summary: Moderately enjoyable.
Review: This is a short book, which is good because there's really not a lot of meat to it. It consists of the author's recollections of his uncertainty about his early career and his qualifications to be a physics researcher, interspersed with conversations with Richard Feynman and observations about Murray Gell-Mann. The book would have been better had it focused more on Feynman and Gell-Mann and less on the author's dope-smoking, garbage-collector friend Ray.
It appears the author left the physics field, due to some combination of losing interest in it and being unable to find a research project that would justify his hiring by Caltech. He later wrote a screenplay that was never made into a movie (I believe thousands of people have done that); co-wrote a mediocre episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation; wrote a book I haven't yet read on the history of geometry; and wrote this modest book. All of this probably means he's accomplished more of note than I have, but probably considerably less than he had hoped as a young physics Ph.D.

Rating:
Summary: Not totally disappointed
Review: This was an easy read however if you are looking to know Feynman, you may be disappointed. In reading the back cover, I expect more about Feynman and less about the author. But I was not totally disappointed, the book was well written and could be digested in one sitting.

Rating:
Summary: Chasing the Rainbow
Review: Want to feel good in spite of today's headlines? Have you got an hour to spare? Then head to the nearest Chapters or Indigo, reach for the slim Feynman's Rainbow, and settle into one of those plush chairs, gracefully provided by the chain store. You are in for an exciting 60-minute journey of discovery that no television show can emulate.
Feynman's Rainbow is really the diary of the first year in the life of a particle physicist, freshly emerging from graduate school, as he settles in at one of the most illustrious research institutes in the world. Yet, when young Leonard Mlodinow began his first-year fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, the only thing he was sure of was that the letter of invitation had been sent to the wrong guy. Insecure about himself, uncertain about his future, Mlodinow turned to Richard Feynman (1918-1988), one of the titans of physics at the time, and a star in the Cal Tech firmament. Feynman's Rainbow is the story of the relationship between the two men, of what started as physics discussions in the seminar room and soon developed into a lifelong friendship as the two explored their views about science, life and the universe.
Mlodinow had actually encountered Feynman some time earlier. In the winter of 1973, as the effects of the Yom Kippur war dragged on, foreign volunteers made their way to Israel to work in several front-line settlements, replacing soldiers on reserve duty. Young Mlodinow was one of them. At night there was little to do, he remembers, except to chat with the other volunteers, look at the stars or visit the small kibbutz library. Among the few books in English was a paperback, The Character of Physical Law, a transcript of some lectures Feynman had given in the '60s, and The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a three-volume set with a picture of the author, an action shot of a happy fellow playing bongo drums.
For Mlodinow, who had a double major in chemistry and mathematics at the time, the books proved to be his first real introduction to physics. "These books were unlike any textbooks I had seen," he remembers. "They were chatty. They were amusing, but more importantly, they made physics sound important, as if a physicist with an idea could single-handedly change the world and the way people view it. . . . Later I found myself thinking over problems and issues from Feynman's books as I drove the tractor hauling chicken eggs." By the time he landed back in Chicago that summer, Mlodinow had decided physics would be his choice for a career.
Now, 10 years later, Mlodinow was in Cal Tech as one of the youngest postdoctoral fellows in the history of the institution, with complete freedom to study whatever he liked. Down the hall were two Nobel Prize winners, Richard Feynman and, next door, Murray Gell-Mann.
If one could chart the scientific landscape along the lines of Saul Steinberg's classic New Yorker cover showing the relationship of New York to the rest of the country, then particle physics with Feynman and Gell-Mann would occupy Manhattan. The surrounding areas, off in New Jersey somewhere, would then represent mathematics and other areas of theoretical physics, and, last, away off in the plains and on the far coast would be some tiny structures -- applied physics, life science. Mlodinow decided to stick to Manhattan with Feynman and Gell-Mann.
Gell-Mann's most famous achievement, so far, had been to propose, in the early 1960s, an elegant mathematical system classifying all elementary particles as particular combinations of quarks. Individual quarks had never been seen, but, eventually, other physicists began to accept Gell-Mann's ideas which, besides earning him a Nobel Prize, conferred on him enormous prestige as one of the most influential scientists of the postwar era. Yet, there was, at that time, a major controversy in physics: If quarks cannot be isolated, what sense does it make to talk about them, besides helping to bestow a sense of order on the universe.
Feynman used to say that there were two kinds of physicists, the Babylonians and the Greeks. The Babylonians made civilization's first great strides in understanding numbers and equations, but it was the Greeks whom we credit with inventing mathematics.
Put simply, the Babylonians focused on the phenomenon, the Greeks on the underlying order. Feynman considered himself a Babylonian; Gell-Mann was more the Greek type, wanting to categorize nature and impose an efficient mathematical order on the underlying data. Our culture is a culture that, by Feynman's characterization, is Greek. It is a culture of logic, rules and order, in which people like Feynman are considered eccentric -- yet are able, eventually, to take the greatest strides in original creativity or, as we say today, "to think outside the box."
Feynman's Rainbow is a slim book, and its author saves the important questions for the end. "What is important in life?," he asks. Here again, Gell-Mann, the ambitious organizer, and Feynman, the free-spirited mentor, joust. Gell-Mann's aim in life was to accomplish and to impress, to be an important person and a leader. "For me," Mlodinow admits, "this ambition was like chasing a rainbow. Even worse, like chasing other people's rainbows, whose beauty I didn't really see."
For Feynman, physics and life were ruled by intuition and inspiration, and this freedom from convention is what inspired Mlodinow to escape the narrowness of his own academic life. "Once I shed the burden of the real and imagined expectations of others, it was easy to tell where my passions lay. If Feynman could see beauty as the inspiration for the theory of the rainbow, so could I."
And so Mlodinow soon left the office next to Gell-Mann to settle in the New Jersey plains, where he pursued the research he liked, optical physics -- the physics of the rainbow -- and began a happy second career as a writer.
Feynman's Rainbow is not a book that provides answers, and yet it is a comforting book. How many people do we know for whom physics conjures painful high-school memories? Have they got an hour to spare? For them, this book would be a surprisingly rewarding gift.

Rating:
Summary: As a writer, Mlodinow is a good scientist
Review: When I picked up "Feynman's Rainbow" in the library, the description sounded like "Tuesdays with Einstein" as it promised to be the story of a young scientist's relationship with his dying mentor. But the narrative lacks Mitch Album's powerful, poignant voice and the content will alienate anyone who doesn't understand the basics of quantum physics (which I have no problem admitting is a group that includes me).

This book's target audience is definitely those in the science fields. I consider myself a fairly sharp and inquisitive individual, but I can't follow a book that dissects the different approaches to quantifying and measuring the movement of those unidentified sub-atomic particles most scientists believe exist. The book contains lines similar to "while person X subscribed to the Greek philosophy of scientific study, person Y was more of a Babylonian thinker." Uh...ok.

The prose reminds me of undergraduate fiction workshops. The problem with books like this is that the author lived through an experience that many people would want to read about but doesn't have the skills himself to transform it into an interesting read. His training is in Math, Chemistry and Physics. Mlodinow picking up the pen and trying to become an author would be like Toni Morrison trying to design NASA's next rocket. His opening description of the dying Feyman returning to class after an operation is so full of clichés and melodrama, I almost stopped there...and now, I wish I had.


Rating:
Summary: The search for muse...
Review: When Leonard Mlodinow was hired into the auspicious physics department at CalTech, he found himself with an office down the hall from some of the greatest minds in the field. When Nobel laureates Richard Feynman (quantum electrodynamics,1965), Murray Gell-Mann (quarks, 1969) and the man on the path to figuring the "big picture", John Schwarz (string theory) are all in one department, it is understandable that a new recruit might feel a little overwhelmed. Feynman's Rainbow is the story of that overwhelming feeling and of the quest for inspiration.

Fresh out of his Ph.D., Mlodinow needed focus in research and in life. His graduate thesis was very well accepted and he was lauded as a bit of a wunderkind... but what was he going to do for an encore? Centering around transcripts of taped conversa-tions he had with Feynman, and incorporating his musings with the other members of the CalTech physics department, Feynman's Rainbow is as much about the beauty in physics as it is about the search for muse. Whether the quest is for quantum mechanics, avant garde poetry or the perfect chocolate cake, inspiration is an elusive quality (as Mlodinow discovers). Feynman's Rainbow offers insights into what drives us to succeed and what compels us to search after new information and new discoveries. For students of physics, Feynman's Rainbow will validate and enthuse, but even for those who know very little about the hard science itself, this book provides enough science to pique the curiosity and enough human drama to satisfy the soul.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: With its extremely interesting style, choice of words, very good english and great story-telling the book is in line with the feynmann's two books: Surely you're joking mr. feynmann and What do you care what other people think. I am half-way through it and it is so difficult for me to put it down. The way he describes it, I start imagining myself to be in his place.