The Feynman Doodles

I was looking at another blog today and saw a pencil sketch that appeared much like doodles. It made me think of a cool doodle page done by Richard Feynman, the great bongo playing, Nobel Prize winning physicist from Cal Tech who probably is most famous in the popular imagination for his o-ring in a glass of ice water demonstration at the Challenger hearings. The late Richard Feynman is on my top 10 list. The top 10 people that I want to have a beer with in Heaven. Even if Richard were still alive, I would have to wait and have the beer with him in Heaven…hoping that stupidity is left behind with the body. I might then be able to understand what in my current incarnation, stuck with a second rate brain, is far, far, beyond me. I read one of his books on quantum electro-dynamics. It took me about 20 minutes to read it. Not a long tome by any means it was about 90 pages long, it started out with a short text preamble. Then it went something like this:




“From the following:”

There were about 20 pages of equations employing symbols and a form of mathematics that I have never seen before or since.

“As such, it is obvious that:”

Another 15 pages of equations,

“And:”

Twenty more pages of arcane math,

“Therefore the only logical conclusion is”

The book ended with 30 pages of additional arithmetical gobbley gook.

Note! Click on images for full size.

I do not have a clue what was said in the book. So I doubt that I would be interesting company to Richard unless I got a whole lot smarter, and I don’t see that happening with the brain I currently own. So hopefully intellects in Heaven are more equal, and Richard does not lose anything to achieve that equality. I became a Feynman groupie after reading his two popular books on his life Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think.

Getting back to this doodle page, I ran into it several years ago in one of my Internet searches. So today I looked in Google images and found the doodles. It along with many of Richard’s other works of art are at the excellent blog below. A word of caution, Richard did some nudes, and one in particular is rather explicit. If such images are troubling to you, I would recommend avoiding this site.

Sketches and Paintings by Richard Feynman

I am not sure why but I find Richard’s doodle page to be fascinating, perhaps a window into the mind of Richard Feynman. The equations mixed in with the artwork, some a bit risqué (the artwork--I have no way of knowing if the equations are risqué), and the graphs are intriguing. We don’t know in what context this page of doodles was created. Is this something that Richard doodled while bored, say at a Cal Tech budgetary meeting? Or might it have been a note pad and he checked the work of a student or did calculations at a physics conference, and then doodled the drawings later? Going the opposite direction, was the page from his sketch pad, the drawing went sour, and in a moment of boredom with the sketch, some insight popped into his mind and he worked it out with the equations and the graphs. Even more deliciously, was he working on the sketch and the insight popped into his mind and the sketch was sacrificed to the math of the insight in a moment of scientific creativity that gladly destroyed the artistic? Is the math even important? Do geniuses doodle in math the way composers construct and alter tunes in their heads, or a poet fiddles with a stanza? Or did Richard simply create a work of art that looked like a doodle page?



Taking a better look at the doodles, it seems the math has a purpose. In English, he states a condition and asks where this will go into action. The fact that I recognize the math, (not that I know what it means, but I at least recognize it as one would recognize something as written in French or Russian without knowing what it said) indicates that this problem is not going to win Richard a Nobel prize. Also I see no evidence of a Feynman diagram, so he is not working on a very deep quantum problem. The lack of a Feynman diagram also supports the idea that this is a real calculation, albeit for Richard probably a mundane calculation, and not one of those “the spirit of Richard Feynman” pieces of art that one so often sees with Einstein, an atom, and E=MC2. On a second look, I would have to say this started with the equations and Richard doodled the art after-wards.


I included several additional works from the above site. I believe the girl in the watercolor is Feynman’s daughter Michelle. I liked the precise nature of the napkin and wine glass. Looking at the various works included at the site, Feynman played with various styles and mediums. Obviously Richard Feynman is not going to be remembered as one of the great artists of the 20 century. However, I find it fascinating that Feynman, a genius in physics, could also create good pieces of art. Feynman had a better understanding of art than Picasso had of quantum physics. One of my goals in the afterlife is to pick Richard Feynman’s mind over a Guinness. I really have no desire to meet Picasso.



















More Information On Richard Feynman:


Wikipedia.org Richard Feynman

Wikipedia.org Feynman Diagram

Amazon.com "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman"

Amazon.com "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"

BBC The Feynman Variations

EDIT 9-20-10 A friend sent me this BBC radio show on Feynman. It is excellent. You will hear some portions of Feynman's lectures delivered by himself and his bongo playing. It is one hour long.

You Tube, Feynman Fun To Imagine, With Christopher Sykes

Here is a fascinating series of discussions with Feynman explaining various notions of physics in layman's terms.

Amazon.com "Genius. The Life and Science of Richard Feynman" by James Gleick

There is an extraordinary heart felt quote that I would like to share with you from Glieck’s excellent biography of Feynman. Paul Olum was president of the University of Oregon at the time of Feynman’s death in 1988. He had this to say about his friend and one time colleague.



“My wife died three years ago, also of cancer…I think about her a lot. I have to admit I have Dick’s books and other things of Dick’s. I have all of the Feynman lectures and other stuff. And there are things that have pictures of Dick on them. The article in Science about the Challenger episode. And also some of the recent books.

I get a terrible feeling every time I look at them. How could someone like Dick Feynman be dead? The great and wonderful mind. The extraordinary feeling for things and ability is in the ground and there’s nothing there anymore.

It’s an awful feeling. And I feel it---A lot of people have died and I know about it. My parents are both dead and I had a younger brother who is dead. But I have this feeling about just two people. About my wife and about Dick.

I suppose, although this wasn’t quite like childhood, it was graduate students together, and I do have more—I don’t know, romantic, or something, feeling about Dick, and I have trouble realizing that he’s dead. He was such an extraordinarily special person in the universe."

From: Genuis. The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. By James Gleick. Page 145.

What I find intriguing in the above quote is the sense of being lost. There is an overwhelming vulnerability in Olum’s words. This was not a carefully prepared statement by a lettered university president with post doctorate work in advanced mathematics. It is the genuine feeling of a man deeply crushed by the loss of his wife and friend. I doubt that many of us could carry on an intelligent conversation with Paul Olum regarding mathematics, but do we have any problem understanding the sentiment he expresses above? Below all that intelligence…all that raw intellectual horsepower—below the ability to see and understand concepts that are so far beyond the ordinary ken of the normal human mind...still lurks a humble human being who must wander alone in the depths of his grief. His words rang true with me, because I felt the same thing…not the same magnitude, but certainly the same feeling. How can such a magnificent mind not exist any longer? How can Richard Feynman be dead?



A thought came to me as I wrote the above paragraph, why is Feynman’s art fascinating? It certainly is not outstanding…it is not going to knock a critic’s socks off. Feynman’s art is fascinating in the same way that Olum’s grief is fascinating…it shows his humanity. He was not an emotionless super intelligent machine that simply spewed out concepts, equations, diagrams, and theories. He was a human being. He was a feeling man, obviously charmed by the female form, yet also playful with the various forms of sketching and art. I mentioned that I had read the book on quantum electro-dynamics—didn’t have a clue of what was being stated. Yet I can look at Richard’s art or read Paul Olum’s words and very much feel connected to another human Soul.

Image Credits:

Feynman’s Artwork:
Sketches and Paintings by Richard Feynman

Feynman with bongos:
University of Southern California, Feynman Webring

Feynman with o-ring at Challenger hearings:
Nasa Spaceflight.com

Feynman Diagram:
Wikipedia.org Feynman Diagram