Richard Feynman

Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist who was widely regarded as the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-World War II era. 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 assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and is also known for his work on the Space Shuttle Challenger accident investigation, shocking the world by demonstrating the failure of the O-Rings. He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Five particular achievements of Feynman stand out as crucial to the development of modern physics. First, and most important, is his work in correcting the inaccuracies of earlier formulations of quantum electrodynamics, the theory that explains the interactions between electromagnetic radiation (photons) and charged subatomic particles such as electrons and positrons (antielectrons). By 1948 Feynman completed this reconstruction of a large part of quantum mechanics and electrodynamics and resolved the meaningless results that the old quantum electrodynamic theory sometimes produced. He also developed Feynman diagrams, a bookkeeping device that helps in conceptualizing and calculating interactions between particles in spacetime, notably the interactions between electrons and their antimatter counterparts, positrons.

In the early 1950s Feynman provided a quantum-mechanical explanation for the Soviet physicist Lev D. Landau's theory of superfluidity—i.e., the strange, frictionless behaviour of liquid helium at temperatures near absolute zero. In 1958 he and the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann devised a theory that accounted for most of the phenomena associated with the weak force, which is the force at work in radioactive decay. Their theory, which turns on the asymmetrical “handedness” of particle spin, proved particularly fruitful in modern particle physics. And finally, in 1968, while working with experimenters at the Stanford Linear Accelerator on the scattering of high-energy electrons by protons, Feynman invented a theory of “partons,” or hypothetical hard particles inside the nucleus of the atom, that helped lead to the modern understanding of quarks.

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 also had a deep interest in biology and was a friend of the physicist turned geneticist Max Delbrück, who was always trying to lure physicists into his group at Caltech, saying that the interesting questions now lay in molecular biology. In the early 1960's, Feynman spent one of his sabbatical years in Delbrück's lab and discovered intragenic supression.

Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, notably a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Feynman also became known through his semi-autobiographical books, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, and books written about him, such as Tuva or Bust!.

References in The Big Bang Theory
'' Richard Feynman is mentioned more than any other scientist, except Albert Einstein. ''

In the Pilot, Sheldon's whiteboard features Feynman diagrams depicting the decay modes of the top quark in electroweak theory.

In The Jerusalem Duality, one of the whiteboards in Sheldon's office features a multiloop Feynman integral for the self-energy of a massless system.

In The Bat Jar Conjecture, one of the 29th Annual Physics Bowl questions includes a Feynman diagram for electron-positron annihilation into muon-antimuon pairs (e+e- → μ+μ-).

In The Peanut Reaction, Howard gets Leonard an autographed copy of The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

In The Guitarist Amplification, Sheldon threatened to make loud noises by blaring a Feynman lecture.

In The Zazzy Substitution, Sheldon names one of his cats after him.

In The Skank Reflex Analysis, the apartment whiteboard near the entry way features Feynman diagrams illustrating the capacity of electrons to produce axions in very dense environments at high temperatures (e.g., the Sun's core).

In The Vacation Solution, Sheldon takes a cue from Richard Feynman and dabbles in biology at Amy's lab.

In The Werewolf Transformation, Sheldon takes up playing the bongos just like Feynman did. He mentions this and Leonard tries to explain who he is to Penny at 3 AM; Penny doesn't care if Feynman is a purple leprechaun living in her butt.