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Sign up today“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”
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Learn moreOne of the most famous science books of our time, the phenomenal national bestseller that “buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist” (Science Digest).
Richard Feynman, one of the world’s greatest theoretical physicists, thrived on adventure. His outrageous exploits once shocked a Princeton dean’s wife to exclaim: “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman!”
In this phenomenal national bestseller, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist recounts in his inimitable voice his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, and much else of an eyebrow-raising and hilarious nature. Woven together with his views on science, Feynman’s life story is a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, eternal skepticism, and raging chutzpah.
Richard P. Feynman (1918–1988) earned a BS from MIT and a PhD from Princeton. From 1942 to 1945, he assisted with the development of the atomic bomb. He then taught at Cornell and Caltech, where he contributed to the theories of superfluidity and quarks. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on the theory of quantum electrodynamics.
Raymond Todd is an actor and director in the theater as well as a poet and documentary filmmaker. He plays jazz trombone for the Leatherstocking quartet, an ensemble that gets its name from one of his favorite Blackstone narrations, The Deerslayer. Todd lives in New York.
Reviews
“A chain reaction is not a bad analogy for Feynman’s life. From a critical mass of gray matter it goes off in all directions, producing both heat and light.”
“Books like this are temptations—to give up reading and devote life to rereading…The book is as litmus paper: anyone who can read it without laughing out loud is bad crazy.”
“Buzzes with energy, anecdote, and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist.”
“A storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain. He proves once again that it is possible to laugh out loud and scratch your head at the same time.”
“Quintessential Feynman—funny, brilliant, bawdy…enormously entertaining.”
“Mr. Feynman’s escapades are worthy of being read aloud…Raymond Todd seems to get as much pleasure out of the diversities of Feynman’s career as the scientist did through living them.”
“Raymond Todd gives an extraordinary performance bringing to evanescent life the amusing adventures of this Nobel prize-winning physicist…Refreshingly honest, iconoclastic, thought-provoking, this one-of-a-kind classic is a must for every collection.”
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