Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 - February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world.
He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing, and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. (wikipedia)
Richard Feynman once cracked the safes at Los Alamos that held the blueprints for the atomic bomb — not because he wanted the secrets, but because he couldn’t resist the puzzle. In the middle of World War II, while other scientists worked under crushing secrecy to split the atom, Feynman amused himself by figuring out how to break into filing cabinets. He guessed that physicists — creatures of habit — used “obvious” combinations like mathematical constants or simple sequences. He was right. One after another, the safes clicked open. Inside: the very designs for weapons that would reshape history. Feynman laughed it off as mischief, but the military brass was not amused.
That prank summed up his life: an irreverent genius who treated the rules of the universe like toys waiting to be taken apart. Long before Los Alamos, Feynman was already on that path. At just 15, with no tutor, no internet, and only a stack of books, he devoured trigonometry, algebra, analytic geometry, calculus, even infinite series. He’d work late into the night in his bedroom in Far Rockaway, New York, scribbling equations while his parents slept. “I didn’t know it was supposed to be hard,” he later said. By the time he arrived at MIT, he was already solving problems ahead of the curriculum.
What made Feynman extraordinary wasn’t just brilliance — it was his refusal to take it too seriously. He played bongos in Brazilian nightclubs, sketched nude models, told dirty jokes in classrooms, and explained quantum mechanics with doodles and stories instead of dense jargon. Students adored him because he made physics feel alive, messy, human.
The safecracking at Los Alamos wasn’t just a prank — it was a metaphor. Feynman believed that most “locked doors” in life were illusions, barriers people obeyed because they assumed they were unbreakable. Whether it was mathematics, physics, or a combination lock, he pushed until it opened. Sometimes the result was world-changing science; sometimes it was just a belly laugh at a general’s expense.
Richard Feynman’s story is the story of a man who made genius look like play — and showed the world that curiosity, mischief, and irreverence could be as powerful as intelligence itself.
“I went to take the calculus book out, and the teacher — sorry, the librarian — said, ‘Child, you can’t take this book out. Why are you taking this book out?’ I said, ‘It’s for my father.’ And so I took it home, and I tried to learn a little bit. My father looked at the first few paragraphs and couldn’t understand it, and this was rather a shock to me — a little bit of a shock, I remember. It was the first time I realized that I could understand what he couldn’t understand.” — Richard P. Feynman (Interview with Charles Weiner, March 4, 1966) Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics (Center for the History of Physics)
Richard Feynman opened a sealed safe at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project using nothing but memory, intuition, and a borrowed screwdriver, then calmly handed out classified files to startled physicists to prove that the world’s most secure laboratory was not secure at all.
He was supposed to focus on equations that would change history, yet he could not ignore the simple fact that the military treated secrecy like magic instead of engineering. Feynman overheard officers bragging about unbreakable locks. He asked for a copy of the combination system. No one gave it to him, so he studied the filing cabinets instead. He noticed scratches near common numbers, patterns in how physicists set combinations, and the lazy habit of choosing birthdays. Within weeks he opened dozens of safes across the lab with nothing but logic.
He never stole anything. He left polite notes that read, “Please improve your security.” Some generals were furious. Others were terrified. Feynman kept telling them that the point of science was honesty, not ceremony.
Los Alamos changed him. He arrived grieving the death of his first wife, Arline. He wrote her letters every day even after she passed, placing them in a box he kept hidden in his dorm room. He played bongos at night to stay sane. He solved problems on cafeteria napkins. He asked questions that made senior physicists pause. Why does this assumption exist How do we know it is true Have we tested it
He carried that mindset into the world after the war. At Cornell he lectured with a style students described as electricity. His chalk moved faster than most people could think. Then came Caltech, where he wrote on every surface he could find, including plates, windows, and the back of menus. He once explained quantum electrodynamics on a diner napkin so clearly that the waitress asked if he could tutor her son.
His greatest public moment came in 1986. The Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded and the Rogers Commission asked for his help. Feynman sat through days of technical explanations. Then he dipped a small piece of rubber O ring into a glass of ice water on live television. The rubber stiffened instantly. The room fell silent. Feynman looked up and said, “This is how it happened.” No politics. No spin. Just truth made visible.
He won the Nobel Prize, yet he preferred talking with undergraduates. He hated prestige. He loved curiosity. He believed nature was endlessly interesting if you looked closely enough.
Richard Feynman lived by a simple rule.
If something mattered, he tested it for himself, and he showed the world that clarity can be louder than power.
A physicist looked at a glass of wine and saw the entire universe—then told us to drink it anyway.
Richard Feynman—Nobel Prize winner, quantum mechanics pioneer, one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century—once stood before a lecture hall full of students and asked them to truly see a simple glass of wine.
Not just glance at it. Not just think about drinking it.
To actually see it.
"A poet once said, 'The whole universe is in a glass of wine,'" Feynman began. "We will probably never know what sense he meant it, for poets do not write to be understood."
The students laughed. But Feynman wasn't joking.
"But it is true," he continued, "that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough, we see the entire universe."
Then he proceeded to prove it.
Look at the liquid itself, he said. Watch how it twists and moves. See how it evaporates depending on the wind and weather. Notice the way light reflects in the glass, bending and refracting. That's physics—the fundamental forces that govern everything from stars to oceans.
Now imagine deeper. Add atoms to your vision. Billions upon billions of them dancing in constant motion, never still, never truly touching, held together by forces we can barely fathom. That's the hidden architecture of reality.
The glass itself? That's geology. It's a distillation of the earth's rocks, melted and reformed. In its molecular composition, we can read the secrets of the universe's age and the evolution of stars that died billions of years ago so that silicon could exist for us to make this glass.
And the wine inside? That's chemistry and biology woven together.
What strange array of chemicals created that color, that taste, that smell? How did they come to be? There are ferments and enzymes, substrates and products, all working in intricate choreography. In wine, Feynman explained, we find one of life's great generalizations: all life is fermentation.
Nobody can truly discover the chemistry of wine without discovering what Louis Pasteur discovered—the cause of much disease, the nature of infection, the hidden world of microorganisms that shape our existence.
"How vivid is the claret," Feynman mused, "pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it."
Then came his warning.
Our small human minds, for convenience, divide this glass of wine—this universe—into separate parts. We call them physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology. We create departments and disciplines and boundaries.
But nature doesn't know these divisions.
Nature doesn't separate chemistry from physics, doesn't distinguish biology from geology. It's all one thing. One seamless, interconnected dance of matter and energy and time.
We're the ones who break it apart to understand it.
We're the ones who forget it was never broken in the first place.
"So let us put it all back together," Feynman told his students. "Not forgetting ultimately what it is for."
And then—in a moment of pure Feynman brilliance—he gave them permission to stop thinking so hard.
"Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"
This is what made Richard Feynman extraordinary.
He could explain quantum mechanics to Nobel committees and play bongos in nightclubs. He could unravel the secrets of subatomic particles and marvel at a glass of wine like a child seeing magic for the first time.
He understood that knowledge isn't about dividing the world into smaller and smaller pieces until nothing is connected to anything else.
It's about seeing how everything—everything—is connected to everything.
The universe isn't hiding in telescopes and particle accelerators.
It's right there in your hand.
In a glass of wine. In a drop of rain. In the breath you just took.
The whole cosmos, compressed into a moment you can hold.
And when you've seen it—truly seen it—Feynman's final lesson remains:
Don't forget to live in it.
Don't get so lost in analysis that you forget wonder.
Don't study the wine so carefully that you forget to taste it.
See the universe.
Then drink it down and smile.
See Also
16.18 - Magnetism - Feynman
Feynman Diagram
Figure 4.14 - Feynmans Triplet Structures of the Proton and Neutron
Figure 7B.09 - Feynmans Triplet Structure of Photon
Genius
Josef Papp
Part 24 - Awakening Your Genius