Richard Feynman

Overview

Richard Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project, then at Cornell and Caltech. His main contribution was a reformulation of quantum mechanics in which a particle's behaviour is computed by summing over every possible path it could take, and a diagrammatic method that turned intractable calculations in quantum electrodynamics into bookkeeping. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 with Schwinger and Tomonaga for that work. He also identified the cause of the Challenger shuttle failure on the 1986 commission and demonstrated it publicly with a piece of rubber and a glass of iced water. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, delivered at Caltech in the early 1960s, are free to read online and are the best single introduction to the subject in English; QED is a shorter non-technical account of his own theory.

Where to start reading

• Space-Time Approach to Quantum Electrodynamics 1949

  The paper introducing the diagrammatic method for organising quantum electrodynamics calculations.

• The Feynman Lectures on Physics 1964

  A three-volume introductory course covering mechanics, electromagnetism, and quantum mechanics, available in full and free on the Caltech website.

• QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter 1985

  Four public lectures explaining quantum electrodynamics without mathematics, using the sum over paths directly.

Part of

• Quantum field theory
• Quantum mechanics

Sources

1. Richard Feynman Nobel Prize
2. The Feynman Lectures on Physics California Institute of TechnologyThe complete lectures, free to read online.
3. Quantum electrodynamics English Wikipedia