Richard Feynman

I just finished a series of four lectures on quantum physics, given in plain(ish) English by the incredible Dr Richard Feynman (1918–1988). Feynman's genius won him the Nobel prize for physics, saw him publishing revelatory dissenting opinion while investigating the Challenger disaster and publicly envisioning nano-technology in the 50's.


His engaging, authentic and accessible style made him a legendary lecturer and watching him speak in this series is a pleasure in itself, let alone the fact that he makes one of the most complex aspects of our physical reality comprehensible for the non-scientist.

I've never been able to figure out how to explain Quantum Electro Dynamics and I thought that this was an opportunity to try a poor, unhappy audience to see whether it was at all possible to explain this subject in a finite number of lectures. And I chose to come to a part of the world as far distant as possible from my home so that if I were not quite successful I wouldn't have to suffer so directly.

Richard Feynman, University of Auckland, 1979.

Feynman lived a remarkable life; from his work in the Manhattan Project and the anguish the atomic bomb caused, to his passion for translating Mayan hieroglyphs and latin drumming. He was a a true Renaissance man- simple and complex in all the best ways.

"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" is a 50 minute interview with him in later life, revealing much of his history and life philosophy, available on GoogleVideo. His blackboards at his death.

"I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things; by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."

Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out