Richard Feynman having the quantum Hall effect on his "to learn" list is amazing. I mean, it makes sense, because less than three years before he died the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for its discovery. But it shows that even one of the greatest physicists of his generation had not fully grasped something that is now part of every undergraduate physics degree's standard curriculum and is arguably much less complicated than, say, Feynman's contributions to Quantum Electrodynamics.
There's something rather sad, maybe poignant about it.
It stands there as a testimonial to our brevity on this planet, to all that we will not see, do, understand.
So it goes, I guess.
I finally put my whiteboard back up that’s been down since before Covid. It still had scribblings of a novel merge sort with lower space overhead that turned out to be an artifact of non-representative sample inputs. As Bletchley Park taught us, humans are terrible at randomness.
No piece of software replicates the experience of having a board to write things on (or magnet things to, if yours is ferromagnetic like mine). The ones that come closest, that money is better spent on something else.
“Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.”
That seems a reasonable goal.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is one of my favorite books. We lost him much too soon.
I'm sure a lot of people here have already seen this, but for those who haven't I highly recommend you watch this video of Feynman explaining light,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjHJ7FmV0M4
He had an amazing ability to make physics fun and entertaining. I could listen to him talk all day.
Anyone know why it seems that Feynman is coming under attack lately - most prominently by You Tuber Angela Collier whose "the sham legacy of Richard Feynman" now has nearly 1M views? I don't understand it at all.
"What I cannot create, I do not understand."
"Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.”
"What I cannot create, I do not understand" , loved it and cropped it up as a little picture reminder for anyone that is interested. https://x.com/nav_chatterji/status/1893224035737030823
Does anyone know what the comment is in the top right of the blackboard? "why cant x sort" or something?
Quite interesting to see [Hans] Bethe Ansatz on there. I wasn't familiar with it, apparently it started as an Ansatz and Bethe corrected it into a theory. But this all happened more than ten years before Feynman was doing physics.
> Know how to solve every problem that has been solved.
I wonder how developers nowadays can related to that since -some of them- relate on AI to watch it doing their craft.
Does anyone know if this was his personal blackboard? For example, would've his students seen this blackboard?
They should sell this as a print
Too bad he did not live that exceptionally long despite such an exceptional mind and accomplishments. Life is weird in that way.
What about the rest of the blackboard? couldn't make some of it out (right side).
Don't you see? He encoded the driving force of his motivation.
He was a con artist with a Nobel Prize.
Feynman used his genius to build annihilation. His contemporary from New York, Jonas Salk was a hero. Richard Feynman should be a warning.
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Feynman should not be celebrated.
His motto "What I cannot create, I do not understand" has been one of the driving forces in my own quest to understand more about the world around me. A good friend had picked up a corollary which was "What I cannot teach, I do not understand" which I think was quite similar. Definitely one of my heroes.