Genius (Magill Book Reviews)

GENIUS: THE LIFE AND SCIENCE OF RICHARD FEYNMAN is the biography of one of the twentieth century’s most original thinkers. Feynman was known by the public for his work on the CHALLENGER investigation and through two best-selling collections of personal anecdotes; his real celebrity, however, lay within the scientific community. His fellow scientists, especially the physicists, saw him as possessing an uncanny insight into the workings of nature. Some admirers believed that Feynman’s intuitive powers were rivaled in our century only by Albert Einstein.

Gleick continually illustrates how Feynman brought this penetrating intuition to bear on some of physics’ most essential questions. His work in quantum electrodynamics earned him a Nobel Prize, an award which he could just as easily have won for his research into superfluidity or the weak interactions in radioactive decay. An insatiable curiosity and a belief in the intelligibility of nature fueled Feynman’s passionate search for truth, which, he held, science could best ascertain.

Feynman’s fascinating life was not all science, however. Scientists and nonscientists alike found him intriguing for varying reasons. Gleick intersperses anecdotes throughout to show Feynman’s playfulness, charm, and roguishness, traits illustrative of his deviation from the stereotype of the dry, one-dimensional man of science.

Ultimately, however, the biography focuses on the science; as Gleick observes, that is how Feynman would have wanted it. History certainly will judge him as one of the pivotal figures in our century’s quest to better understand nature’s most fundamental forces. There can be no doubting that Feynman was indeed a genius.

Sources for Further Study

Fortune. CXXVI, November 30, 1992, p. 149.

Library Journal. CXVII, October 1, 1992, p. 96.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. November 1, 1992, p. 1.

New Statesman and Society. V, October 30, 1992, p. 39.

The New York Times Book Review. XCVII, October 11, 1992, p. 3.

Newsweek. CXX, October 19, 1992, p. 70.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXIX, November 2, 1992, p. 43.

Science News. CXLII, October 17, 1992, p. 258.

The Wall Street Journal. November 3, 1992, p. A14.

The Washington Post Book World. XXII, October 11, 1992, p. 1.