0:00:06 > 0:00:09Richard Feynman was one of the most extraordinary scientists
0:00:09 > 0:00:11of the 20th century.
0:00:11 > 0:00:13As a brilliant physicist,
0:00:13 > 0:00:17he pioneered an entirely new area of his subject.
0:00:17 > 0:00:20He's discovered a new law of nature, only a very few people did that.
0:00:20 > 0:00:24The most numerically precise physical theory ever invented.
0:00:24 > 0:00:29Yet, he scorned the Nobel Prize he received for this work.
0:00:29 > 0:00:30I've already got the prize.
0:00:30 > 0:00:33The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.
0:00:33 > 0:00:34The kick in the discovery.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37Feynman's brilliance helped shape history.
0:00:37 > 0:00:40As a young man, he helped to build the atom bomb,
0:00:40 > 0:00:43ending the Second World War.
0:00:43 > 0:00:46And yet, throughout his life, Feynman rejected authority
0:00:46 > 0:00:48and refused to conform,
0:00:48 > 0:00:51preferring instead to follow his passions -
0:00:51 > 0:00:53from bongo playing to biology,
0:00:53 > 0:00:55from poetry to painting,
0:00:55 > 0:00:57from computing to cracking safes.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00Feynman's fascination with the world knew no bounds.
0:01:02 > 0:01:04And in his dying days,
0:01:04 > 0:01:07as a maverick investigator on the Challenger shuttle disaster,
0:01:07 > 0:01:10he confronted the Washington establishment
0:01:10 > 0:01:13to reveal the truth about what went wrong.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16This stuff that I got out of your seal,
0:01:16 > 0:01:18and I put it in ice water.
0:01:18 > 0:01:21Above all, Feynman's infectious enthusiasm for life
0:01:21 > 0:01:24captivated millions of readers and viewers.
0:01:24 > 0:01:28Feynman's been a showman pretty much his whole life.
0:01:28 > 0:01:31Any room he walked into, everyone is looking at him.
0:01:31 > 0:01:33He was the centre of attention.
0:01:33 > 0:01:37Electrons behave exactly the same in this respect as protons.
0:01:37 > 0:01:42That is, they're both screwy, but in exactly the same way.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46Here, in his own words and those of the people who knew him best,
0:01:46 > 0:01:51this is the story of the most captivating communicator
0:01:51 > 0:01:53in the history of science.
0:01:53 > 0:01:56But you got to stop and think about the complexity,
0:01:56 > 0:02:00the INCONCEIVABLE nature of nature!
0:02:21 > 0:02:23When my mother was pregnant first,
0:02:23 > 0:02:26my father said, "If he's a boy,
0:02:26 > 0:02:29"I want him to be a scientist."
0:02:30 > 0:02:35Richard Phillips Feynman was born on the 11th May 1918,
0:02:35 > 0:02:37during the Depression,
0:02:37 > 0:02:41to working-class parents living in the outskirts of New York.
0:02:43 > 0:02:45Even when I was a small boy,
0:02:45 > 0:02:47Poppa used to sit me on his lap
0:02:47 > 0:02:50and read to me from the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
0:02:52 > 0:02:55And he would read, say, about dinosaurs.
0:02:55 > 0:02:56It would say something like,
0:02:56 > 0:03:00"This thing is 25 feet high
0:03:00 > 0:03:03"and the head is six feet across."
0:03:04 > 0:03:07And so, he'd stop always and say, "Let's see what that means.
0:03:07 > 0:03:10"That would mean that if he stood in our front yard,
0:03:10 > 0:03:14"he would be high enough to put his head through the window.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17"But not quite, cos the head is a little bit too wide."
0:03:17 > 0:03:19It was very exciting and interesting to think
0:03:19 > 0:03:22that there were animals of such magnitude,
0:03:22 > 0:03:24and that they all died out
0:03:24 > 0:03:26and at that time, nobody knew why.
0:03:28 > 0:03:30So that's the way I was educated by my father.
0:03:32 > 0:03:36By the age of ten, Richard had his own science laboratory at home,
0:03:36 > 0:03:38where he tinkered with old radios
0:03:38 > 0:03:41and experimented with physics.
0:03:41 > 0:03:46He hired me, for four cents a week,
0:03:46 > 0:03:48as his lab assistant,
0:03:48 > 0:03:51to amaze his friends.
0:03:51 > 0:03:53You know, there was a spark gap
0:03:53 > 0:03:55with voltage against it...
0:03:56 > 0:03:58..and if you put your finger in,
0:03:58 > 0:04:01you get a shock.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04It was my job, as part of my four cents,
0:04:04 > 0:04:08to put my finger in this spark gap for his friends' amusement.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14Their father, Melville Feynman,
0:04:14 > 0:04:17worked for a company which made uniforms.
0:04:17 > 0:04:21This exposure to the military led to a strong rejection of authority,
0:04:21 > 0:04:23a value he instilled in his son.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28One of the things that my father taught me was a disrespect.
0:04:30 > 0:04:33He'd open a picture, a New York Times, maybe it was a General,
0:04:33 > 0:04:36and he'd say, "Now, look at these humans," he'd say.
0:04:36 > 0:04:39"Here's one human standing here and all these others are bowing.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41"Now, what is the difference? Why are they all bowing to him?
0:04:41 > 0:04:43"Only because of his name and his position.
0:04:43 > 0:04:45"Because of his uniform.
0:04:45 > 0:04:47"Not because of something he especially did."
0:04:51 > 0:04:55At the age of 17, Feynman won a maths competition in New York
0:04:55 > 0:04:57and it became clear this was a subject
0:04:57 > 0:05:00in which he was greatly gifted.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03In 1935, he was awarded a place
0:05:03 > 0:05:08at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10But away from home for the first time,
0:05:10 > 0:05:13he was going to miss more than just his family.
0:05:15 > 0:05:18She was very beautiful,
0:05:18 > 0:05:19Arline Greenbaum,
0:05:19 > 0:05:22the most beautiful girl on the beach.
0:05:23 > 0:05:29She had great dimples and long hair down to here, when she unbraided it.
0:05:30 > 0:05:31Oh, we loved her!
0:05:31 > 0:05:35They were not officially engaged, she was only 15.
0:05:35 > 0:05:37She was sweet.
0:05:37 > 0:05:39We all loved her, she loved all of us.
0:05:44 > 0:05:47From MIT, Feynman moved to Princeton,
0:05:47 > 0:05:50achieving full marks in the maths and physics entrance exam -
0:05:50 > 0:05:52an unprecedented feat.
0:05:55 > 0:05:59But back home, things weren't as perfect.
0:06:00 > 0:06:05The family went away for a spring vacation
0:06:05 > 0:06:07with Arline.
0:06:07 > 0:06:09We went swimming
0:06:09 > 0:06:13and my father saw this lump on Arline's neck
0:06:13 > 0:06:16and said to her, "What is that?"
0:06:16 > 0:06:20And she didn't know, but she went to a doctor
0:06:20 > 0:06:22and it was the tuberculosis.
0:06:24 > 0:06:26We were all heartbroken.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30It was before there was any medicine for it.
0:06:30 > 0:06:34And although she was sick and dying, he married her,
0:06:34 > 0:06:37because he wanted to take care of her.
0:06:37 > 0:06:39It was very hard on my mother,
0:06:39 > 0:06:43because she was afraid he would catch tuberculosis.
0:06:44 > 0:06:45But...
0:06:47 > 0:06:50..my mother wasn't given a choice.
0:06:52 > 0:06:56The couple braced themselves for life in the shadow of TB.
0:06:56 > 0:07:00But another menace was about to disrupt their time together.
0:07:12 > 0:07:15Just months before Richard and Arline were married,
0:07:15 > 0:07:18America was drawn into the Second World War,
0:07:18 > 0:07:21following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
0:07:23 > 0:07:27Feynman was asked if he wanted to join a top-secret project
0:07:27 > 0:07:30based in a Government laboratory at Los Alamos, in New Mexico.
0:07:32 > 0:07:34Code-named Manhattan,
0:07:34 > 0:07:37its objective was to build an atom bomb.
0:07:38 > 0:07:40The fear was that Germany
0:07:40 > 0:07:43would invent such a terrifying new weapon first
0:07:43 > 0:07:44and use it to win the war.
0:07:47 > 0:07:50There was nothing that I knew that indicated
0:07:50 > 0:07:53that if we could do it, they couldn't do it
0:07:53 > 0:07:56and therefore, it was very important to try to cooperate.
0:07:56 > 0:07:58Germany was the centre,
0:07:58 > 0:08:02the intellectual centre of theoretical physics.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06They knew the power of this - that if Germany got this first,
0:08:06 > 0:08:09we have to make sure that they don't rule the world.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16I felt I should do in order to protect civilisation, if you want.
0:08:17 > 0:08:21Feynman became a member of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.
0:08:21 > 0:08:25Here, he joined some of the world's finest physicists,
0:08:25 > 0:08:28pooling their combined brainpower to try to create the bomb.
0:08:32 > 0:08:38Oppenheimer was in charge of the scientific or engineering side.
0:08:38 > 0:08:40And he was quite a heavyweight.
0:08:40 > 0:08:43Fermi, Niels Bohr...
0:08:43 > 0:08:47You know, the big names of extremely high level.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51Despite being surrounded by extraordinary physicists,
0:08:51 > 0:08:54the challenge of developing an atom bomb so quickly
0:08:54 > 0:08:57was an enormous undertaking.
0:08:57 > 0:08:58One fundamental problem
0:08:58 > 0:09:02was the sheer volume of calculations required.
0:09:02 > 0:09:05Without computers, it had to be done manually,
0:09:05 > 0:09:07slowing progress enormously.
0:09:07 > 0:09:10That was, until Feynman arrived.
0:09:10 > 0:09:15He found a way to get calculations going in parallel.
0:09:15 > 0:09:21Still manually, still each person doing one operation at a time,
0:09:21 > 0:09:24but working in parallel and then,
0:09:24 > 0:09:28having the parts of the calculation come back together later,
0:09:28 > 0:09:32so that three problems in nine months got turned around
0:09:32 > 0:09:35to nine big problems done in three months.
0:09:35 > 0:09:40'I put on the blackboard a challenge, "Can we do it?", to the boys.
0:09:40 > 0:09:44'They all start, "Yes, we'll work double shifts, we'll work overtime,"
0:09:44 > 0:09:45'"We'll try it!"
0:09:45 > 0:09:49'As a result, we did problems nearly ten times as fast.'
0:09:50 > 0:09:54He somehow got this team of human computers
0:09:54 > 0:09:56to work at an inhuman pace
0:09:56 > 0:09:58and got things to roll.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01And that was when his scientific seniors,
0:10:01 > 0:10:04the big shots of science at that time,
0:10:04 > 0:10:07first became aware of this fellow.
0:10:07 > 0:10:08Despite being a key member
0:10:08 > 0:10:11of the most secret Government project of the war,
0:10:11 > 0:10:15Feynman's streak of maverick mischief was never far away.
0:10:17 > 0:10:19'So I used to pick the locks all the time
0:10:19 > 0:10:22'and point out that it was very easy to do,
0:10:22 > 0:10:25'and every time we had a meeting of the whole...everybody together,
0:10:25 > 0:10:28'I'd get up and I'd say that we have important secrets
0:10:28 > 0:10:31'and we shouldn't keep them in such thing. We need better locks!'
0:10:33 > 0:10:36Between safecracking and doing physics calculations,
0:10:36 > 0:10:39the pace of life at Los Alamos was relentless.
0:10:39 > 0:10:42But for Feynman, it was a welcome distraction.
0:10:44 > 0:10:46In a sanatorium nearby,
0:10:46 > 0:10:50his wife Arline was confined to her bed,
0:10:50 > 0:10:52slowly dying of her disease.
0:10:54 > 0:10:56At that time,
0:10:56 > 0:11:00dry climates were believed to be good for tuberculosis.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03So although he was at high altitude,
0:11:03 > 0:11:06she was at a lower altitude, in a hospital.
0:11:09 > 0:11:11I remember the day she died.
0:11:12 > 0:11:14She was 25.
0:11:17 > 0:11:19He was 27.
0:11:20 > 0:11:22He was broken-hearted.
0:11:28 > 0:11:31Then, in the aftermath of his grief,
0:11:31 > 0:11:34Feynman was forced to confront the reality
0:11:34 > 0:11:36of what he had helped create.
0:11:39 > 0:11:43'They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with.
0:11:43 > 0:11:44'20 miles away,
0:11:44 > 0:11:47'you are not going to see a damn thing through dark glasses.
0:11:47 > 0:11:50'Well, I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes,
0:11:50 > 0:11:53'bright light never can hurt your eyes, is ultraviolet light that does.
0:11:53 > 0:11:56'So I got behind a truck windshield,
0:11:56 > 0:11:59'so the ultraviolet can't go through glass, so that would be safe
0:11:59 > 0:12:01'and so, I could see the damn thing.
0:12:08 > 0:12:10'I'm about the only guy in the world
0:12:10 > 0:12:13'that actually looked at the damn thing in the first Trinity test.'
0:12:33 > 0:12:37Three weeks later, America prepared to detonate a second atom bomb.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40This time, it wasn't a test.
0:12:41 > 0:12:43He had been...
0:12:44 > 0:12:48..expected to go as the scientist,
0:12:48 > 0:12:50with the first flight.
0:12:52 > 0:12:56But the bomb was so successful,
0:12:56 > 0:13:01they decided they didn't need a scientist, so he did not go.
0:13:01 > 0:13:04Otherwise, he would have been in that plane.
0:13:11 > 0:13:14The bomb exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima,
0:13:14 > 0:13:17on the 6th August 1945.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20It killed more than 80,000 people.
0:13:21 > 0:13:25Three days later, a second bomb was detonated - at Nagasaki.
0:13:28 > 0:13:31There was a very considerable elation and excitement.
0:13:31 > 0:13:36And there was kind of parties and people got drunk and...
0:13:38 > 0:13:44..it would make a tremendously interesting contrast
0:13:44 > 0:13:46of what was going on in Los Alamos
0:13:46 > 0:13:50at the same time as what was going on in Hiroshima.
0:13:50 > 0:13:53Feynman was deeply disturbed by the knowledge
0:13:53 > 0:13:56he had contributed to the deaths of so many.
0:13:57 > 0:14:02He had had this great triumph on the technical level at Los Alamos,
0:14:02 > 0:14:06and then, of course, a terrible let down afterwards...
0:14:08 > 0:14:12..having run this tremendous race, and then, at the end of it,
0:14:12 > 0:14:14concluding that it wasn't, in fact...
0:14:16 > 0:14:17..worthwhile.
0:14:17 > 0:14:20In the months after this double trauma -
0:14:20 > 0:14:22first, losing his wife,
0:14:22 > 0:14:26then, realising the destruction he'd helped unleash,
0:14:26 > 0:14:28Feynman was thrown into darkness.
0:14:30 > 0:14:32Maybe from just the bomb itself,
0:14:32 > 0:14:35and maybe for some other psychological reasons,
0:14:35 > 0:14:37I had just lost my wife,
0:14:37 > 0:14:40I was really in a kind of depressive condition.
0:14:56 > 0:14:58In the autumn of 1945,
0:14:58 > 0:15:01Feynman was invited to become a professor
0:15:01 > 0:15:04in the Physics Department at Cornell University.
0:15:04 > 0:15:07But he was still shaken by the events of the summer.
0:15:07 > 0:15:10They expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this,
0:15:10 > 0:15:12and I wasn't wonderful.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15I though to myself, "I haven't done anything important.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18"And I'm never going to do anything important."
0:15:18 > 0:15:21But I used to enjoy physics and mathematical things
0:15:21 > 0:15:25and because I used to play with it, it was never very important.
0:15:25 > 0:15:27But I used to do things for the fun of it.
0:15:27 > 0:15:30So I decided, I'm going to do things only for the fun of it.
0:15:32 > 0:15:35While Feynman was rediscovering the fun in physics,
0:15:35 > 0:15:37science was in crisis.
0:15:37 > 0:15:41For many years, new discoveries about how atoms behave
0:15:41 > 0:15:44had been throwing physics into turmoil.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48Old assumptions about the world were being proved wrong.
0:15:49 > 0:15:54This new problematic area of physics was christened Quantum Mechanics.
0:15:56 > 0:15:58Quantum Mechanics, in a lot of ways,
0:15:58 > 0:16:01was the most profound psychological shock
0:16:01 > 0:16:04that physicists have ever had in all of history.
0:16:04 > 0:16:05Newton was not right.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08You can know everything there is to know about the world
0:16:08 > 0:16:11and yet, you cannot predict with perfect accuracy
0:16:11 > 0:16:14what will happen next.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16Quantum Mechanics had revealed the problems
0:16:16 > 0:16:19of accurately predicting how atoms
0:16:19 > 0:16:22and their electromagnetic forces would behave.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27And because these are the fundamental building blocks
0:16:27 > 0:16:30of nature, it threw everything else into doubt too.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Everything that happens around you, other than gravity,
0:16:35 > 0:16:38all the immediately experienceable parts of the world,
0:16:38 > 0:16:42are electromagnetism at work.
0:16:42 > 0:16:44When two atoms get together to form a molecule,
0:16:44 > 0:16:49that's electromagnetism, so all of chemistry is electromagnetism.
0:16:49 > 0:16:51And if that means all of chemistry is electromagnetism,
0:16:51 > 0:16:53then, guess what?
0:16:53 > 0:16:56All of biology is electromagnetism.
0:16:57 > 0:17:01Literally, everything around us is a manifestation of electromagnetism
0:17:01 > 0:17:02one way or another.
0:17:04 > 0:17:09A new field, called Quantum Electro-Dynamics, or QED, emerged
0:17:09 > 0:17:11to try to make sense of electromagnetism
0:17:11 > 0:17:13and sub-atomic matter.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17Sometimes QED seemed to work,
0:17:17 > 0:17:19but other times, its predictions were way off.
0:17:21 > 0:17:24It was all crazy, it didn't make any sense. It gave you infinity.
0:17:24 > 0:17:27Infinity is not an answer. Nothing is infinity.
0:17:27 > 0:17:30We don't measure in the lab infinity, you get a finite answer.
0:17:30 > 0:17:32You can't have your basic fundamental theory of physics
0:17:32 > 0:17:34give you infinity.
0:17:34 > 0:17:36These predictions of infinity
0:17:36 > 0:17:40were stumping the smartest physicists on the planet.
0:17:40 > 0:17:44Even the father of QED, Paul Dirac, was foxed.
0:17:44 > 0:17:47When I was a kid, I read Dirac's book,
0:17:47 > 0:17:50and he had these problems that nobody knew how to solve
0:17:50 > 0:17:51which he described there.
0:17:51 > 0:17:53I couldn't understand the book very well
0:17:53 > 0:17:55because I really wasn't up to it.
0:17:55 > 0:17:58But there, in the last paragraph at the end of the book, it said,
0:17:58 > 0:18:01"Some new ideas are here needed."
0:18:01 > 0:18:04And so, there I was, some new ideas were needed.
0:18:04 > 0:18:07OK, so I started to think of new ideas.
0:18:07 > 0:18:09Perhaps typically,
0:18:09 > 0:18:13Feynman's inspiration for his new ideas was unconventional.
0:18:15 > 0:18:16When I was eating lunch,
0:18:16 > 0:18:19some kid threw up a plate in the cafeteria
0:18:19 > 0:18:23which has a blue medallion on the plate,
0:18:23 > 0:18:26the Cornell sign in the cafeteria.
0:18:26 > 0:18:28And as he threw up the plate and it came down,
0:18:28 > 0:18:33it wobbled and the blue thing went around like this.
0:18:33 > 0:18:35And I wondered what the relation was between the two.
0:18:35 > 0:18:37See, I was just playing.
0:18:37 > 0:18:38No importance at all.
0:18:38 > 0:18:41So I played around with the equations
0:18:41 > 0:18:43of motion of rotating things.
0:18:43 > 0:18:46And I kept continuing to play with it.
0:18:46 > 0:18:49And this rotation lead me to a similar problem
0:18:49 > 0:18:51of the rotational of the spin of the electron
0:18:51 > 0:18:53according to Dirac's equations.
0:18:53 > 0:18:55And that just lead me back
0:18:55 > 0:18:57into quantum electro-dynamics
0:18:57 > 0:18:58Everything just poured out.
0:18:58 > 0:18:59It was just like letting a cork
0:18:59 > 0:19:01out of a bottle.
0:19:04 > 0:19:06Inspired by the spinning plate,
0:19:06 > 0:19:10Feynman realised that the fact the equations resulted in infinity
0:19:10 > 0:19:13didn't mean they were wrong.
0:19:13 > 0:19:16The problem just needed to be looked at from a new perspective.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19It turns out that that kind of challenge was perfectly suited
0:19:19 > 0:19:21for someone like Richard Feynman,
0:19:21 > 0:19:26who, surprisingly maybe, didn't like to speculate.
0:19:26 > 0:19:29He wasn't the kind of modern physicist that we celebrate
0:19:29 > 0:19:31who's always coming up with a new theory of the multi-verse
0:19:31 > 0:19:33or forces of nature or whatever.
0:19:33 > 0:19:36He really liked to work in the context
0:19:36 > 0:19:38of things that were supposed to be understood
0:19:38 > 0:19:41and just understand them better than anybody else.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46To work around the infinites in QED,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49Feynman came up with a truly revolutionary idea.
0:19:51 > 0:19:54It was such a strange solution not even his sister,
0:19:54 > 0:19:56by then, a physicist herself,
0:19:56 > 0:19:58recognised it as serious work.
0:20:00 > 0:20:03Richard said to me, "Would you go in the room and get my papers?
0:20:03 > 0:20:06"I want to start working and my papers are in there."
0:20:06 > 0:20:09So I went in the room, and I looked...
0:20:09 > 0:20:13there was no mathematics, it was these silly little diagrams,
0:20:13 > 0:20:15and I came out and said,
0:20:15 > 0:20:17"Richard, I can't find your papers,
0:20:17 > 0:20:19"it's just these kind
0:20:19 > 0:20:20"of silly diagrams."
0:20:20 > 0:20:24He says, "That is my work!"
0:20:29 > 0:20:31The simple little diagrams Feynman had invented
0:20:31 > 0:20:35were a brilliant way to sidestep the complicated calculations
0:20:35 > 0:20:37required for QED.
0:20:37 > 0:20:39They were a sort of shortcut,
0:20:39 > 0:20:41allowing him to avoid the infinities
0:20:41 > 0:20:44and make meaningful predictions about the world.
0:20:44 > 0:20:48He saw that there was actually a sort of pictorial way
0:20:48 > 0:20:51of thinking about these pictures, these equations.
0:20:51 > 0:20:54You could associate a little cartoon,
0:20:54 > 0:20:57a little Feynman diagram, as we now call them,
0:20:57 > 0:20:59to every one of these terms in the equation.
0:21:00 > 0:21:02Other people would have to work for months
0:21:02 > 0:21:04and he would get it in an afternoon.
0:21:04 > 0:21:07And eventually, that's what got his ideas noticed,
0:21:07 > 0:21:09because he's getting the right answer
0:21:09 > 0:21:11and he's doing it much simpler,
0:21:11 > 0:21:14even though no-one understood what he was doing.
0:21:14 > 0:21:17It turns out to be so useful that now we're applying it
0:21:17 > 0:21:20to completely different fields that aren't particle physics at all.
0:21:20 > 0:21:23When we look at the evolution of galaxies
0:21:23 > 0:21:25and large scale structure in the universe,
0:21:25 > 0:21:27we're finding that Feynman diagrams
0:21:27 > 0:21:30are a helpful way of calculating those quantities as well.
0:21:34 > 0:21:36Quantum Electrodynamics,
0:21:36 > 0:21:39which is the theory that Feynman put the finishing touches on,
0:21:39 > 0:21:43is the most numerically precise physical theory ever invented.
0:21:47 > 0:21:51In recognition of this work, in 1965,
0:21:51 > 0:21:54Feynman was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics.
0:21:54 > 0:21:56He shared it with two other physicists,
0:21:56 > 0:22:00Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga,
0:22:00 > 0:22:03who were also working on the same problem.
0:22:09 > 0:22:11Was it worth a Nobel Prize?
0:22:13 > 0:22:15I don't know.
0:22:16 > 0:22:19I don't know anything about the Nobel Prize.
0:22:19 > 0:22:22I don't understand what it's all about or what's worth what
0:22:22 > 0:22:24and if the people in the Swedish Academy decide
0:22:24 > 0:22:28that X, Y or Z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it!
0:22:28 > 0:22:30I think it was entirely right and proper.
0:22:30 > 0:22:35It was one of the best-earned Nobel Prizes
0:22:35 > 0:22:38there ever was, I would say.
0:22:38 > 0:22:43I don't see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy
0:22:43 > 0:22:47decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize.
0:22:47 > 0:22:48I've already got the prize.
0:22:48 > 0:22:51The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.
0:22:51 > 0:22:53The kick in the discovery.
0:22:53 > 0:22:55The observation other people use it.
0:22:56 > 0:22:58Those are the real things!
0:22:58 > 0:23:02The honours are unreal to me.
0:23:02 > 0:23:04I don't believe in honours.
0:23:04 > 0:23:06It bothers me. Honours bothers me!
0:23:06 > 0:23:09Honours is epaulettes. Honours is uniforms.
0:23:09 > 0:23:13My Poppa brought me up this way. I can't stand it. It hurts me.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29In 1959, on a trip to Europe,
0:23:29 > 0:23:32Feynman met Yorkshire woman Gweneth Howarth.
0:23:32 > 0:23:35A year later, they were married.
0:23:35 > 0:23:39Back in California, now Professor of Physics at Caltech,
0:23:39 > 0:23:41Richard and Gweneth started a family.
0:23:41 > 0:23:45I got a kick, when I was a boy, of my father telling me things,
0:23:45 > 0:23:50so I tried to tell my son things that were interesting about the world.
0:23:50 > 0:23:52He was an excellent father.
0:23:52 > 0:23:55Always up to explaining things or do things.
0:23:55 > 0:23:59We would go on walks after dinner, my father and I,
0:23:59 > 0:24:02and talk about things and...and it was, you know,
0:24:02 > 0:24:04it was wonderful and delightful.
0:24:10 > 0:24:13I asked him about things and he tried to explain them.
0:24:15 > 0:24:19Physics and math and history and politics and science fiction
0:24:19 > 0:24:22and life, the universe and everything.
0:24:23 > 0:24:28I'm very lucky that I got to do that two or three times a week.
0:24:28 > 0:24:29Say, "Let's go for a walk." Sure!
0:24:32 > 0:24:35Growing up with Richard Feynman as your dad was never dull,
0:24:35 > 0:24:38particularly if you were his teenage daughter.
0:24:40 > 0:24:45My parents ordered a car, a van that we could all go camping in,
0:24:45 > 0:24:47and they had it painted,
0:24:47 > 0:24:50which was so...so odd,
0:24:50 > 0:24:53because they weren't like this at all.
0:24:55 > 0:24:57My father may have been immune to embarrassment,
0:24:57 > 0:24:59but I certainly was not!
0:24:59 > 0:25:03And they had, you know, the diagrams painted on it.
0:25:03 > 0:25:05So most people thought they were Indian designs,
0:25:05 > 0:25:08but I remember once we'd just gone to McDonalds
0:25:08 > 0:25:11and we were in the parking lot and walking out to the car,
0:25:11 > 0:25:15and someone asked us, "Why is your van covered in Feynman diagrams?"
0:25:15 > 0:25:17And Mother says, "Because we're the Feynmans!"
0:25:21 > 0:25:24Feynman's reputation as a communicator of science
0:25:24 > 0:25:25was spreading around the world.
0:25:25 > 0:25:28In the early 1960s,
0:25:28 > 0:25:31he began presenting lectures for the public, which were televised.
0:25:40 > 0:25:42APPLAUSE
0:25:47 > 0:25:51I'm going to discuss how we would look for a new law.
0:25:51 > 0:25:54In general, we look for a new law by the following process.
0:25:54 > 0:25:56First, we guess it.
0:25:56 > 0:25:58LAUGHTER
0:25:58 > 0:26:00Don't laugh. That's really true.
0:26:00 > 0:26:03Then we compute the consequences of the guess.
0:26:03 > 0:26:05If it disagrees with the experiment...
0:26:07 > 0:26:09..it's wrong.
0:26:09 > 0:26:12In that simple statement is the key to science.
0:26:12 > 0:26:15It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your guess is.
0:26:15 > 0:26:18It doesn't make a difference how smart you are,
0:26:18 > 0:26:20who made the guess, or what his name is.
0:26:20 > 0:26:23If it disagrees with the experiment, it's wrong.
0:26:23 > 0:26:25That's all there is to it.
0:26:25 > 0:26:26LAUGHTER
0:26:27 > 0:26:31Caltech invited him to re-write the physics curriculum
0:26:31 > 0:26:33for undergraduates. His new course,
0:26:33 > 0:26:36spanning the entire history of physics,
0:26:36 > 0:26:39became known as 'The Feynman Lectures.'
0:26:39 > 0:26:44All these lectures had a certain amount of excitement...
0:26:44 > 0:26:48and an element of what you might call
0:26:48 > 0:26:51solid showbiz demonstration.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54I'm sure you're all familiar with the joke
0:26:54 > 0:26:57about the fact that the average family in the United States
0:26:57 > 0:26:59seems to have two-and-a-half children.
0:26:59 > 0:27:02It doesn't mean that there's a half a child in any family, whatever,
0:27:02 > 0:27:04the children come in lumps!
0:27:04 > 0:27:05LAUGHTER
0:27:05 > 0:27:08He was very visual. He told jokes.
0:27:08 > 0:27:13He had a unique way of explaining things
0:27:13 > 0:27:17and sometimes that was a slight problem
0:27:17 > 0:27:20because he was so engaging, you'd walk out of a lecture thinking,
0:27:20 > 0:27:22"Well, that all made complete sense."
0:27:22 > 0:27:27But, of course, five minutes later, you couldn't really remember all the connections.
0:27:27 > 0:27:30You were just swept along by Feynman's personality,
0:27:30 > 0:27:33by his humour, by his analogies.
0:27:33 > 0:27:36Graduate students started idolising him,
0:27:36 > 0:27:41but by the 1960s his course here at Caltech was very famous.
0:27:44 > 0:27:47Outside science, Feynman's interests were also flourishing.
0:27:47 > 0:27:50He'd become an accomplished bongo player.
0:27:50 > 0:27:53And he developed a love of painting and drawing,
0:27:53 > 0:27:55based on a close friendship
0:27:55 > 0:27:59with renowned Californian artist, Jirayr Zorthian.
0:27:59 > 0:28:05"Jirayr", he said. "You don't know a thing about physics,
0:28:05 > 0:28:07"and I don't know a thing about art.
0:28:07 > 0:28:10"And yet we both admire Leonardo Da Vinci.
0:28:10 > 0:28:15"What do you say, we become two Leonardo da Vincis?
0:28:15 > 0:28:19He said, "One Sunday I will give you a day of physics
0:28:19 > 0:28:23"and the following Sunday, you give me a day of art.
0:28:23 > 0:28:27When he started, he was absolutely an amateur.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31Just very, very...crude.
0:28:32 > 0:28:35He drew a picture of me when I was,
0:28:35 > 0:28:37when I was young and very fidgety,
0:28:37 > 0:28:42and, and it just has, you know he just has my, my head,
0:28:42 > 0:28:47some hair, and then, and then like my hands up here,
0:28:47 > 0:28:52so clearly I was kind of like, "Oh, I don't really want to do this."
0:28:52 > 0:28:57It's pure with his, um, that he can see the gesture.
0:28:57 > 0:29:03I think he maybe got a kick out of working with his hands,
0:29:03 > 0:29:09but particularly the pen and doing features of people.
0:29:09 > 0:29:14In the end, he became a very accomplished draftsman.
0:29:18 > 0:29:21So enthusiastic an art student was Feynman,
0:29:21 > 0:29:26that he took to spending time in Giannoni's, a strip bar in Pasadena.
0:29:26 > 0:29:30Here, he divided his attention between sketching the girls
0:29:30 > 0:29:33and solving physics equations.
0:29:34 > 0:29:37Other physicists couldn't understand it.
0:29:37 > 0:29:42And say, "You know, Feynman is supposed to be a physicist
0:29:42 > 0:29:46"and he is a brilliant, brilliant physicist
0:29:46 > 0:29:52"and we need his input very often in Caltech.
0:29:52 > 0:29:56"We need him to talk to us about physics.
0:29:56 > 0:29:58But what does he do?
0:29:58 > 0:30:05He goes off and spends all his time with go-go girls,
0:30:05 > 0:30:08bongo drummers and artists.
0:30:08 > 0:30:11He wastes so much time.
0:30:11 > 0:30:14'I don't see what they give him.'
0:30:14 > 0:30:20'But I think that Feynman got a lot out of these people
0:30:20 > 0:30:24'and it enriched his life.'
0:30:25 > 0:30:29In the 1960s, Feynman took a sabbatical year.
0:30:29 > 0:30:32But instead of heading for a different physics department
0:30:32 > 0:30:35the other side of the country, he simply crossed the Caltech campus
0:30:35 > 0:30:39to study an area which had long fascinated him - viruses.
0:30:39 > 0:30:43During this time, he also became fascinated
0:30:43 > 0:30:46by the social structure of ants
0:30:46 > 0:30:50and enthralled by the potential applications of nanotechnology.
0:30:53 > 0:30:58In the long term of what he wanted to do this year and next year,
0:30:58 > 0:31:00he would think about...
0:31:00 > 0:31:03figuring out some secret of the universe,
0:31:03 > 0:31:06but in terms of day-to-day or hour-to-hour
0:31:06 > 0:31:10he was always guided by, what seemed interesting and fun
0:31:10 > 0:31:15and just sort of an intuition for the right thing to work on.
0:31:17 > 0:31:20In the early 1980s, his son Carl's budding career
0:31:20 > 0:31:25in the emerging field of super computers proved irresistible.
0:31:25 > 0:31:30He signed up for a summer job at Carl's start-up company in Boston.
0:31:30 > 0:31:34'We were a bunch of MIT students starting a company.'
0:31:34 > 0:31:36So, the first day we start the company,
0:31:36 > 0:31:40literally, I get this knock on the door, I open the door.
0:31:40 > 0:31:44And he showed up and he said, "Feynman reporting for duty, what should I do?"
0:31:44 > 0:31:46Salutes.
0:31:46 > 0:31:51I think, "Uh oh, I haven't figured out what I'll do with this guy!"
0:31:51 > 0:31:55I mean, I've got a Nobel Prize winning great physicist...
0:31:55 > 0:31:58So, I've had a quick meeting
0:31:58 > 0:32:01and trying to come up with some project that was worthy of Feynman.
0:32:01 > 0:32:05So, some people said, "We want you to think about applications
0:32:05 > 0:32:07"of our parallel computing."
0:32:07 > 0:32:11The application of parallel processing to quantum croma-dynamics.
0:32:11 > 0:32:16He said, "No, come on, that's, that's nonsense, you know."
0:32:16 > 0:32:18"What do you really want me to do?
0:32:18 > 0:32:21And, I said, "Well, actually, you know
0:32:21 > 0:32:23"we don't really have any pencils or paper..."
0:32:23 > 0:32:26He said, "Right, I'll go out and buy some!"
0:32:26 > 0:32:30So, his first duty was to go out and buy the stationery for the company.
0:32:30 > 0:32:33All the paper clips and pencils and so on.
0:32:33 > 0:32:36That was his first assignment.
0:32:38 > 0:32:41'Thinking Machines', as the company was called,
0:32:41 > 0:32:43would go on to become a major player
0:32:43 > 0:32:45in the world of Parallel Super-computing,
0:32:45 > 0:32:49with Feynman applying his methods of shortening calculations,
0:32:49 > 0:32:54developed in the 1940s, to the new digital age.
0:32:54 > 0:32:57And as always, working with Feynman
0:32:57 > 0:33:00was filled with welcome distractions.
0:33:00 > 0:33:04We both liked spaghetti, because it was easy to cook,
0:33:04 > 0:33:09and I ask him why it was that when you broke a piece of spaghetti
0:33:09 > 0:33:12it often broke into three pieces, instead of two?
0:33:12 > 0:33:15You should try it, it really does.
0:33:17 > 0:33:22So, of course, he came up with a theory of it immediately,
0:33:22 > 0:33:25but instead of being satisfied with it
0:33:25 > 0:33:28he constructed an experiment to see if the theory was true,
0:33:28 > 0:33:32which involved slowly moving the spaghetti off the end of the table
0:33:32 > 0:33:33and breaking it at different lengths.
0:33:33 > 0:33:37And then, that theory was wrong and he came up with another theory
0:33:37 > 0:33:41and then each theory would lead to another experiment.
0:33:41 > 0:33:44By the time the evening was over, we had broken spaghetti
0:33:44 > 0:33:47all over the place and we STILL didn't know why
0:33:47 > 0:33:50spaghetti broke in three places.
0:33:53 > 0:33:58This playful curiosity coupled with the anti-authoritarian values,
0:33:58 > 0:34:03instilled by his father, frequently led Feynman down a mischievous path.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08He's just so funny and irreverent.
0:34:10 > 0:34:14You have to kind of look at that picture a few minutes and think...
0:34:14 > 0:34:18"Oh my gosh, he's really, you know!
0:34:18 > 0:34:21"Making nice little horns!"
0:34:23 > 0:34:27Important people. You know. "Oh yes, I think now would be a great time."
0:34:29 > 0:34:32He didn't need the external validation
0:34:32 > 0:34:34of having everybody respecting him all the time,
0:34:34 > 0:34:38because he respected himself, he knew he was an extraordinary person.
0:34:38 > 0:34:41And if he came off as kind of a doofus
0:34:41 > 0:34:44to some guy that he doesn't know, it's OK.
0:34:44 > 0:34:48Because he knows inside that he's a man of substance.
0:34:51 > 0:34:56In 1984, Feynman collaborated with his friend, Ralph Leighton
0:34:56 > 0:34:59on a humorous book of anecdotes from his life.
0:35:00 > 0:35:05'I opened the safes which contained all the secrets to the atomic bomb.'
0:35:07 > 0:35:11It was kind of accidental how the books caught on.
0:35:11 > 0:35:15The publisher released the first one,
0:35:15 > 0:35:19Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman, in January of 1985.
0:35:19 > 0:35:25And the edition was like 2,000 copies or some low number.
0:35:25 > 0:35:28And in January.
0:35:28 > 0:35:34I was thinking, January, the whole holiday season is over,
0:35:34 > 0:35:38who's going to buy a book in January?
0:35:40 > 0:35:42But people did buy it.
0:35:42 > 0:35:46And Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman quickly became a best seller.
0:35:46 > 0:35:48It remains to this day,
0:35:48 > 0:35:52one of the biggest-selling science books of all time.
0:35:52 > 0:35:58I do remember coming down one evening and seeing him
0:35:58 > 0:36:00just, you know, giggling
0:36:00 > 0:36:04and clearly enjoying the book that he was reading.
0:36:04 > 0:36:08And I sort of looked, you know, "What are you reading?"
0:36:08 > 0:36:11And he held up the book so I could see that it was his own,
0:36:11 > 0:36:15Surely You're Joking. And he said, "Ah, such a character."
0:36:15 > 0:36:22Freely admitting that, yes, he was laughing at his own history.
0:36:23 > 0:36:26The book vividly captured Feynman's world view,
0:36:26 > 0:36:30the sense of curiosity and fun guiding him through life.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35It was an approach he communicated to an even bigger audience through
0:36:35 > 0:36:39a series of BBC documentaries, broadcast around the world.
0:36:44 > 0:36:48I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view,
0:36:48 > 0:36:51which I don't agree with very well.
0:36:51 > 0:36:56You hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is." And I'll agree.
0:36:56 > 0:36:59And he says, I, as an artist, can see how beautiful this is,
0:36:59 > 0:37:00but you, as a scientist,
0:37:00 > 0:37:03take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.
0:37:03 > 0:37:06And I think that he's kind of nutty.
0:37:06 > 0:37:10First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people
0:37:10 > 0:37:11and to me too.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15I believe, although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically
0:37:15 > 0:37:19as he is, that I can appreciate the beauty of the flower.
0:37:19 > 0:37:23At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees.
0:37:23 > 0:37:26I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside,
0:37:26 > 0:37:28which also have a beauty.
0:37:28 > 0:37:32I mean, it's not just beauty at this dimension of one centimetre,
0:37:32 > 0:37:35there's also beauty at a smaller dimensions, the inner structure.
0:37:35 > 0:37:37Also the processes.
0:37:37 > 0:37:42The fact that the colours and the flower are evolved in order to
0:37:42 > 0:37:46attract insects to pollinate it is interesting.
0:37:46 > 0:37:49It means that insects can see the colour.
0:37:49 > 0:37:51It adds a question,
0:37:51 > 0:37:54does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms?
0:37:54 > 0:37:56Why is it aesthetic?
0:37:56 > 0:38:02All kinds of interesting questions, which a science knowledge only adds
0:38:02 > 0:38:06to the excitement and mystery and the aura of a flower.
0:38:06 > 0:38:10It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12Most people only have a few stories.
0:38:12 > 0:38:15You and I might have three or four stories to tell.
0:38:15 > 0:38:20Some people have ten, and Feynman had hundreds.
0:38:22 > 0:38:24And Feynman was so mesmerizing.
0:38:24 > 0:38:27I think Chris Sykes in his documentaries,
0:38:27 > 0:38:29captured Feynman how he was.
0:38:29 > 0:38:32He takes enormous pleasure in finding out about things
0:38:32 > 0:38:35and exploring life and everything it has to offer.
0:38:35 > 0:38:38More than that, he takes tremendous pleasure in telling you about it.
0:38:38 > 0:38:40I think he was pleased with how it worked out,
0:38:40 > 0:38:44that he was able to communicate with so many people,
0:38:44 > 0:38:46sort of his view of the world and of nature and so on.
0:38:48 > 0:38:52When I was a student at Caltech, I went up to Feynman's door
0:38:52 > 0:38:56and knocked on it and a door opened and I explained
0:38:56 > 0:38:58that my mother had watched his programme about him,
0:38:58 > 0:39:02thought he was interesting, she had no science background,
0:39:02 > 0:39:04and I said, "Do you think you could write to her
0:39:04 > 0:39:07"because maybe I'll have a better chance of teaching her physics?"
0:39:07 > 0:39:10And Feynman did write to her. He wrote a letter in which he said,
0:39:10 > 0:39:15"Dear Mrs Chown. Ignore your son's attempts to teach you physics.
0:39:15 > 0:39:20"Physics is not the most important thing. Love is."
0:39:20 > 0:39:22So it kind of backfired.
0:39:22 > 0:39:24I got the greatest living physicist at the time
0:39:24 > 0:39:27telling my mother that physics isn't important.
0:39:27 > 0:39:29That love was the important thing.
0:39:39 > 0:39:44Through his films and books, Feynman had touched the lives of millions.
0:39:44 > 0:39:47Yet there was something all this success
0:39:47 > 0:39:49and recognition couldn't alter.
0:39:52 > 0:39:55I did a lot of running and Feynman thought,
0:39:55 > 0:39:59gee, that's a healthy thing to do, so he started running too.
0:39:59 > 0:40:04And when you start running regularly, you lose weight.
0:40:04 > 0:40:09And Feynman suddenly noticed that one side kind of bulged out.
0:40:11 > 0:40:14They discovered a big mass in his abdomen.
0:40:14 > 0:40:15He came home and reported,
0:40:15 > 0:40:18"It's the size of a football. It's consumed one whole kidney."
0:40:18 > 0:40:20And he says, "Well, I went to the medical library
0:40:20 > 0:40:22"and I looked things up and I figure
0:40:22 > 0:40:25"it's about a 30% chance it'll kill me."
0:40:25 > 0:40:29So, you know, not the kind of thing you want to hear from your father.
0:40:29 > 0:40:33But exactly the kind of thing he would say.
0:40:33 > 0:40:35And...
0:40:35 > 0:40:39He sort of quit working at that point, because, you know,
0:40:39 > 0:40:43surgery and chemotherapy and so on, it's a full time job.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47One day his secretary Helen Tuck called me up
0:40:47 > 0:40:50to tell me that Dick had cancer and that he was going to the hospital
0:40:50 > 0:40:52for an operation the following Friday.
0:40:52 > 0:40:54It was a very dangerous operation
0:40:54 > 0:40:58and it was not assured that he would survive it.
0:40:58 > 0:41:01I promised not to tell anyone and he didn't know that I knew.
0:41:01 > 0:41:05And I told him that somebody had found an apparent error
0:41:05 > 0:41:08in a calculation that we had done and published together.
0:41:08 > 0:41:11And so on Monday morning we met in my office
0:41:11 > 0:41:16and he sat down and started working, and he was consumed by it.
0:41:16 > 0:41:20All his energy and attention was devoted to solving this problem.
0:41:20 > 0:41:22And we worked on it all day long.
0:41:22 > 0:41:25And finally at six o'clock in the evening,
0:41:25 > 0:41:28we decided the problem was intractable, it couldn't be solved,
0:41:28 > 0:41:30we couldn't figure out what the answer was.
0:41:30 > 0:41:32And we gave up and went home.
0:41:32 > 0:41:36Two hours later, he called me at home to say he'd solved the problem.
0:41:36 > 0:41:40He hadn't been able to give up, and stop working on it
0:41:40 > 0:41:42and finally he'd found the solution.
0:41:42 > 0:41:45He dictated the solution to me over the phone, told me what it was,
0:41:45 > 0:41:47and he was exhilarated, absolutely walking on air.
0:41:48 > 0:41:52Feynman would recover from this first operation for cancer.
0:41:52 > 0:41:55But the disease would never completely go away,
0:41:55 > 0:41:58and he would always be living under its shadow.
0:42:06 > 0:42:13'We have main engine start. Four, three, two, one. And lift off.
0:42:13 > 0:42:16'Lift off of the 25th space shuttle mission
0:42:16 > 0:42:19'and it has cleared the tower.'
0:42:19 > 0:42:22'Challenger go with roll programme.'
0:42:22 > 0:42:24'Roger. Roll, Challenger.
0:42:24 > 0:42:27'Good roll, programme.'
0:42:27 > 0:42:33In January 1986, NASA launched its 25th space shuttle mission.
0:42:33 > 0:42:37It symbolized a new era of space flight by adding a school teacher
0:42:37 > 0:42:40called Christa McAuliffe to the crew.
0:42:40 > 0:42:43'65 final. Thank you.'
0:42:45 > 0:42:47'Challenger. Go with throttle up.'
0:42:50 > 0:42:54I was in social studies and I think we were taking a test and
0:42:54 > 0:42:58the teacher came in and said, "We've had a horrible accident."
0:43:04 > 0:43:07'Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation.
0:43:07 > 0:43:09'We have no down link.'
0:43:09 > 0:43:13And then coming home, and my parents had already seen it,
0:43:13 > 0:43:16which was unusual because they didn't really watch TV.
0:43:16 > 0:43:19'Watch your data carefully.'
0:43:19 > 0:43:22'Take hard copies of all of your displays.
0:43:22 > 0:43:25'Make sure you protect any data source you have.'
0:43:25 > 0:43:29The loss of their space shuttle and its crew of seven, live on TV,
0:43:29 > 0:43:33shocked America. The country was thrown into mourning.
0:43:36 > 0:43:39Our nation's loss is first a profound personal loss
0:43:39 > 0:43:42to the family and the friends and the loved ones
0:43:42 > 0:43:44of our shuttle astronauts.
0:43:44 > 0:43:48But there was one question everyone wanted an answer to -
0:43:48 > 0:43:50what had gone wrong?
0:43:52 > 0:43:56A Presidential Commission was hastily put together to find out,
0:43:56 > 0:43:59but it was comprised largely of space industry insiders
0:43:59 > 0:44:02with close ties to NASA.
0:44:02 > 0:44:08Someone independent with unimpeachable scientific credentials was needed.
0:44:08 > 0:44:12I have a policy practically of never going near Washington.
0:44:12 > 0:44:14And I called up various friends of mine
0:44:14 > 0:44:17who were connected to the space programme one way or the other
0:44:17 > 0:44:20and tried to ask them if they didn't see
0:44:20 > 0:44:23whether I should go or somebody else could do it just as well.
0:44:23 > 0:44:25His friends were, "Dick, you got to go
0:44:25 > 0:44:29"cos you're the only guy who can cut through the bullshit!"
0:44:29 > 0:44:31He asked me what I thought he should do
0:44:31 > 0:44:34so I just asked him, "Do you think it's an important problem?"
0:44:34 > 0:44:36And he said, yes he did.
0:44:36 > 0:44:38I said, "Do you think you can make a difference?"
0:44:38 > 0:44:41And he said, after a while, he said, "Well, yeah, probably can."
0:44:41 > 0:44:42I didn't say another word.
0:44:42 > 0:44:46And after a few minutes hesitation he said, "To hell with you, Hibbs,"
0:44:46 > 0:44:47and hung up.
0:44:50 > 0:44:54Feynman broke his policy and within days of the accident
0:44:54 > 0:44:56he had joined the inquiry in Washington.
0:44:59 > 0:45:02The investigation was led by William Rogers,
0:45:02 > 0:45:05an ex-Secretary of State and the ultimate Washington insider.
0:45:07 > 0:45:09His formal, bureaucratic approach was
0:45:09 > 0:45:13the polar opposite of the freewheeling maverick professor.
0:45:15 > 0:45:18Mr Rogers, he knew nothing about it.
0:45:18 > 0:45:22I had been on accident boards before and I took the opportunity.
0:45:22 > 0:45:24I said "Hey, I just did one of these investigations,
0:45:24 > 0:45:26"would you like to see it?"
0:45:26 > 0:45:28And I think reluctantly Rogers said
0:45:28 > 0:45:30"Yeah, OK, you can show it to us,
0:45:30 > 0:45:32"but we're not going to do it that way."
0:45:32 > 0:45:35And so I went through this very logical step-by-step process
0:45:35 > 0:45:39of how you investigate a space accident and Rogers said,
0:45:39 > 0:45:41"No, we don't have the technical capability to do that."
0:45:41 > 0:45:43And that's when Feynman butted in.
0:45:43 > 0:45:46He said, "No, I like that. I think that's a smart way to go."
0:45:47 > 0:45:49For Feynman and the chairman,
0:45:49 > 0:45:52it was the beginning of a poor relationship,
0:45:52 > 0:45:55but for the professor and the Air Force General,
0:45:55 > 0:45:58it was the start of a close friendship.
0:45:58 > 0:46:01And he just was the smartest guy in the world.
0:46:01 > 0:46:05And he had a reputation for integrity, you know,
0:46:05 > 0:46:08he was the most honest guy in the world.
0:46:10 > 0:46:14He didn't accept something unless he really could prove it.
0:46:18 > 0:46:20The two men began touring the US,
0:46:20 > 0:46:23visiting NASA sites where the shuttle was made,
0:46:23 > 0:46:26questioning the engineers and managers.
0:46:27 > 0:46:30In the process of speaking to the engineers, he realised,
0:46:30 > 0:46:33"Wow, some of them won't talk to me right now cos
0:46:33 > 0:46:36"the managers are in the room," you know?
0:46:36 > 0:46:39It wasn't simply a technical puzzle,
0:46:39 > 0:46:43there was a human puzzle going on too.
0:46:43 > 0:46:46Writing home to Michelle and Gweneth,
0:46:46 > 0:46:49Feynman expressed his frustration and excitement
0:46:49 > 0:46:51at his hunt for the truth.
0:46:53 > 0:46:55'Dearest Gweneth and Michelle.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58'This is the first time I have had time to write to you.
0:46:58 > 0:47:02'I already smell certain rats that I will not forget because I just
0:47:02 > 0:47:06'love the smell of rats, for it is the spore of exciting adventure.'
0:47:09 > 0:47:14But there was a problem, NASA managers didn't want to reveal
0:47:14 > 0:47:16the full extent of their knowledge.
0:47:20 > 0:47:22The result was a smokescreen.
0:47:25 > 0:47:27NASA wanted to control everything that they gave
0:47:27 > 0:47:31to the Commission and actually withheld things.
0:47:31 > 0:47:33They didn't lie,
0:47:33 > 0:47:36but they certainly didn't go around blabbing the truth either.
0:47:38 > 0:47:40What Feynman didn't know was that
0:47:40 > 0:47:44General Kutyna had a secret source inside NASA.
0:47:44 > 0:47:48Sally Ride was America's first woman in space
0:47:48 > 0:47:50and another Commission member.
0:47:50 > 0:47:54She privately told the general that NASA had long had doubts
0:47:54 > 0:47:56about how the rubber O-rings,
0:47:56 > 0:47:59the seals in the shuttle's solid rocket boosters,
0:47:59 > 0:48:01worked in the cold.
0:48:01 > 0:48:05The temperature on the morning of the launch had been below freezing.
0:48:05 > 0:48:08The general needed to get this information to Feynman
0:48:08 > 0:48:11without compromising his source.
0:48:13 > 0:48:17The chance came after supper one evening at Kutyna's house.
0:48:17 > 0:48:20The general restored classic cars.
0:48:20 > 0:48:23I took him out in the garage to show him the car
0:48:23 > 0:48:26and Feynman really isn't interested in cars.
0:48:26 > 0:48:30So we walked around the car and I showed him the interior
0:48:30 > 0:48:32and I showed him where the engine was.
0:48:32 > 0:48:34And Feynman looked at my work bench
0:48:34 > 0:48:37and he sees a couple of carburettors out there.
0:48:37 > 0:48:40And he says, "Kutyna, what are those carburettors?"
0:48:40 > 0:48:44And I said, "Oh, they're from the Opal and I keep one put together
0:48:44 > 0:48:46"and then one I take apart and clean."
0:48:46 > 0:48:49And then the thought came to me.
0:48:49 > 0:48:54I needed to get the idea of cold and O-rings and leakage across.
0:48:54 > 0:48:58I said, "You know, Professor, these doggone carburettors have O-rings
0:48:58 > 0:49:00"and they leak when they're cold."
0:49:02 > 0:49:07Feynman had his answer and he also had an inspired idea
0:49:07 > 0:49:11about how to convey it to the world's press.
0:49:16 > 0:49:18From that and the various things that you told me
0:49:18 > 0:49:22about the need for resilience and the lack of resilience...
0:49:22 > 0:49:24When the Commission next met, he began questioning
0:49:24 > 0:49:28senior engineers about the effect of cold on the O-rings
0:49:28 > 0:49:30on the morning of the launch.
0:49:30 > 0:49:32Their replies were evasive,
0:49:32 > 0:49:36denying that temperature could have had an effect.
0:49:39 > 0:49:43Before the event, from information that was available
0:49:43 > 0:49:45and the understanding that was available,
0:49:45 > 0:49:48was it fully appreciated everywhere that this seal
0:49:48 > 0:49:52would become unsatisfactory at some temperature?
0:49:52 > 0:49:57And was there some sort of a suggestion of a temperature at which
0:49:57 > 0:50:00the SR...the SRB I guess you call it...
0:50:00 > 0:50:03- Yes, that's right. - ..Shouldn't be run?
0:50:03 > 0:50:06It was the judgment that under the conditions that we would see
0:50:06 > 0:50:10on launch day, given the configuration that we ran,
0:50:10 > 0:50:12that the seal would function at that temperature.
0:50:12 > 0:50:14That was the final judgment.
0:50:14 > 0:50:16It was Feynman's chance.
0:50:16 > 0:50:20He decided to use the power of a classic science demonstration.
0:50:22 > 0:50:25During the hearings, they had that actual O-ring joint
0:50:25 > 0:50:27and were passing it up the rows.
0:50:27 > 0:50:29It goes to Feynman.
0:50:29 > 0:50:34I'm sitting to his left and I hand it to him and he puts it down.
0:50:34 > 0:50:39And then he goes into his pocket and pulls out the pliers and the
0:50:39 > 0:50:43hose clamp and the screwdriver, and takes the joint apart.
0:50:43 > 0:50:47Pulls out the piece of rubber O-ring, puts the clamp on it,
0:50:47 > 0:50:49then I know what he's going to do.
0:50:49 > 0:50:53He sees the ice water and he swears it was just kind of an accident.
0:50:53 > 0:50:57He got this idea, "Wait a minute, I know I know how
0:50:57 > 0:51:01"I can get data on how rubber is when it's cold."
0:51:01 > 0:51:06He clamped a piece of rubber and put it in a beaker full of ice water.
0:51:06 > 0:51:12I took this stuff that I got out of your seal and I put it in ice water.
0:51:12 > 0:51:16And I discovered that when you put some pressure on it for a while
0:51:16 > 0:51:19and then undo it, it maintains, it doesn't stretch back,
0:51:19 > 0:51:22it stays the same dimension.
0:51:22 > 0:51:24In other words, for a few seconds at least,
0:51:24 > 0:51:27and more seconds than that, there's no resilience in this
0:51:27 > 0:51:32particular material when it's at a temperature of 32 degrees.
0:51:32 > 0:51:36I believe that has some significance for our problem.
0:51:42 > 0:51:45The O-rings, which were supposed to create a seal
0:51:45 > 0:51:50around the solid boosters, had got so cold they'd lost their ability
0:51:50 > 0:51:55to flex and to fill the gap between the boosters.
0:51:56 > 0:52:01And that's why the fuel had leaked and the shuttle had exploded.
0:52:01 > 0:52:03Feynman had nailed, once and for all,
0:52:03 > 0:52:06that the cold could have been the cause
0:52:06 > 0:52:09of the shuttle's failure just 73 seconds after launch.
0:52:09 > 0:52:13It really was a turning point in the investigation.
0:52:13 > 0:52:15It couldn't be ignored.
0:52:16 > 0:52:21In the summer of 1986, the Commission's report was submitted.
0:52:21 > 0:52:25In its appendix, Feynman added a stark reminder
0:52:25 > 0:52:27about the limits of science.
0:52:27 > 0:52:29His last recommendation I think
0:52:29 > 0:52:32really summed it up in one simple paragraph.
0:52:34 > 0:52:36"For a successful technology,
0:52:36 > 0:52:41"reality must take precedence over public relations,
0:52:41 > 0:52:43"for nature cannot be fooled."
0:52:50 > 0:52:54I remember, it was very hard on him.
0:52:54 > 0:52:58He was just exhausted. He came over, he says,
0:52:58 > 0:53:03"I came over to tell you that my cancer's come back again.
0:53:05 > 0:53:07"Doesn't look too good."
0:53:07 > 0:53:10So I don't know what we talked about and I don't know how
0:53:10 > 0:53:13I got off on the subject.
0:53:13 > 0:53:18I said, "I've been thinking about an invariant in turbulent flow."
0:53:18 > 0:53:20He said, "What do you mean?"
0:53:20 > 0:53:23I explained a little bit what it was all about.
0:53:23 > 0:53:25The invariant, you know.
0:53:25 > 0:53:29I said, "Well under these, such and such conditions."
0:53:29 > 0:53:31And he says, "Let's see."
0:53:31 > 0:53:33So I had a notebook there.
0:53:33 > 0:53:38He took the notebook and he started, he wrote it all down step by step.
0:53:38 > 0:53:42I think it took 13 steps to get to that.
0:53:42 > 0:53:46He says, "Yes, that's true, it is an invariant."
0:53:48 > 0:53:52Then he says, "You got me thinking about physics again.
0:53:52 > 0:53:54"I can go home now."
0:53:57 > 0:54:02Feynman went into hospital for the last time in February 1988.
0:54:02 > 0:54:05His kidneys were failing and he decided
0:54:05 > 0:54:09he didn't want to go through with dialysis to prolong his suffering.
0:54:10 > 0:54:15I still sort of thought, "No, this isn't the way it is."
0:54:15 > 0:54:19But he was able to handle a lot of physical difficulties
0:54:19 > 0:54:21as long as his mind was sharp.
0:54:21 > 0:54:26When a person is dying, their hands move a little.
0:54:26 > 0:54:32And the nurse who was there says that he's not
0:54:32 > 0:54:37trying to communicate, that's just natural.
0:54:39 > 0:54:45And he raised his hands like this.
0:54:47 > 0:54:52And he went like this, which, if you know it, is the symbol that
0:54:52 > 0:54:56a magician gives when he's going to do a trick. OK?
0:54:56 > 0:54:58And he went...
0:55:01 > 0:55:08He was communicating, again, of his observations of the world.
0:55:08 > 0:55:11The doctors were wrong, he could hear.
0:55:11 > 0:55:14He could move if he tried hard enough.
0:55:14 > 0:55:18And understand... He could hear and understand what was being said.
0:55:18 > 0:55:20And those were his last words.
0:55:23 > 0:55:28Richard Feynman died on the 15th February 1988
0:55:28 > 0:55:31in hospital in Los Angeles at the age of just 69.
0:55:34 > 0:55:38When I took my last walk with Richard Feynman, he was telling me
0:55:38 > 0:55:43a bunch of funny stories, but I realised the message behind
0:55:43 > 0:55:49the stories was that he was about to die of cancer and I got very sad.
0:55:50 > 0:55:54And he noticed it and he asked me, "What's wrong?"
0:55:54 > 0:55:59And I said, "I'm sad because I'm realising that you're about to die."
0:56:00 > 0:56:04And he said, "Yeah, that bugs me sometimes too.
0:56:06 > 0:56:11"But not as much as you'd think," he said, "because you realise
0:56:11 > 0:56:17"that at some point in your life, you've told a lot of stories
0:56:17 > 0:56:20"and those stories are going to stay around even after you're gone."
0:56:22 > 0:56:25Today, over 25 years since his death,
0:56:25 > 0:56:30Feynman's prophecy has more truth than he could ever have imagined.
0:56:30 > 0:56:33Through an invention that hadn't been created when he died,
0:56:33 > 0:56:35his stories do live on.
0:56:37 > 0:56:40Because through their reimagining on the World Wide Web,
0:56:40 > 0:56:45a new generation is discovering the delights of time with Feynman.
0:56:49 > 0:56:53It's fantastic to just be able to Google Feynman, Richard Feynman,
0:56:53 > 0:56:58you know, any kind of variation and there it is.
0:56:58 > 0:57:03You have a lot of stuff out there.
0:57:03 > 0:57:08I see my father referenced in popular culture a lot more now
0:57:08 > 0:57:09than when he was alive.
0:57:14 > 0:57:18I have a friend who's an artist and he's sometimes taken a view,
0:57:18 > 0:57:20which I don't agree with very well.
0:57:20 > 0:57:25You hold up a flower and say, "Look how beautiful it is." And I'll agree.
0:57:25 > 0:57:27And he says, I, as an artist, can see how beautiful this is,
0:57:27 > 0:57:32but you, as a scientist, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing
0:57:32 > 0:57:34and I think that he's kind of nutty.
0:57:36 > 0:57:40You wonder what Feynman would have made of the internet.
0:57:40 > 0:57:43And I think he would really, really like the idea
0:57:43 > 0:57:49that he's spread all over the world in clips, short and long,
0:57:49 > 0:57:53on the internet, for maybe all time. I think he'd like that.
0:57:53 > 0:57:56You know, you just touch it like this...
0:57:56 > 0:57:57FEYNMAN'S VOICE
0:57:57 > 0:58:00..and you bring his voice right back, you know.
0:58:00 > 0:58:03'"The whole universe is in a glass of wine."
0:58:03 > 0:58:07'I don't think we'll ever know in what sense he meant that.
0:58:07 > 0:58:08LAUGHTER
0:58:08 > 0:58:11'For the poets don't like to be understood.'
0:58:13 > 0:58:16I know what I'll remember him for.
0:58:16 > 0:58:21For being a good brother and a good person.
0:58:24 > 0:58:27He wasn't just the scientist, he wasn't just the artist,
0:58:27 > 0:58:28he wasn't just the educator.
0:58:28 > 0:58:31He was physics with a human face, you know.
0:58:31 > 0:58:34He showed that in order to be a top-ranked physicist
0:58:34 > 0:58:36you can still be a human being.
0:58:36 > 0:58:39I think that's a very important legacy to people
0:58:39 > 0:58:40who want to do science.
0:58:40 > 0:58:42It's a human endeavour and he showed that.
0:58:47 > 0:58:52Has Richard Feynman inspired you to follow your own path in life?
0:58:52 > 0:58:56Join The Open University to explore your options and find out more
0:58:56 > 0:59:00about how he revolutionised the face of physics.
0:59:00 > 0:59:02Go to:
0:59:03 > 0:59:06And follow the links to The Open University.
0:59:21 > 0:59:24Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd