Book SummarySurely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, by Richard Feynman

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Unlike most award-winning scientists, Richard Feynman is more commonly remembered for his quirky wit, his adventurous spirit, and his colorful personality than for his achievements in the world of physics. Feynman began his career as a young theoretician working on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. He went on to do research at Cornell and Caltech, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his work on quantum mechanics.

However, that’s not the story Feynman wants to tell. After all, his discoveries in the realm of science were merely one result of his lifelong love of learning and adventure—of seeking out new experiences, exploring new skills, widening his horizons, and living life to its fullest. Throughout his tales runs a thread of inquisitive delight that shows how intellectual rigor and persistence can go hand-in-hand with excitement and fun.

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Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary The Life of Richard Feynman

Rather than focusing on the major events in Richard Feynman’s biography, the stories in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! take place around them. Feynman shares the details of his life through the incidents and adventures he most liked to talk about, rather than what others might consider more significant, such as his research in quantum mechanics or his work on the atomic bomb. In this section, we’ll explore the shape of Feynman’s life, from his years in school at Princeton and MIT, his participation in the Manhattan Project, and his return to the academic world, during which (and much to his annoyance) he earned a Nobel Prize.

Richard Feynman was born in New York on May 11, 1918. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1935-1939 and was reluctant to leave after finishing his undergraduate work. However, MIT’s rules required its undergraduates to complete their advanced degrees elsewhere, so Feynman did his graduate studies at Princeton University until earning his doctorate in 1942. Although he found Princeton to have a stuffier, more formal culture than MIT, Feynman describes its physics...

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary The Manhattan Project

As Feynman approached the end of his graduate studies, the US entered the Second World War. Feynman would contribute his intellectual gifts as part of the theoretical team that developed the atomic bomb. While Feynman would begin as a low-ranking recruit, he would play an important role in the advancement of the atom bomb project, though the ultimate success of his military mission would coincide with a great personal tragedy.

Like many Americans, Feynman felt it was his duty to contribute to the war effort, but he didn’t want to go to army boot camp; he believed he could better serve in a technical position. While he was still working on his Ph.D., a general came to Princeton looking for physicists to recruit, and Feynman volunteered, even though at the time very few people even understood what a physicist was. Feynman says his first job was working on an analog computer to help artillery target enemy aircraft—work that centered on tinkering with gears and engineering design, rather than Feynman’s area of expertise, which was theoretical physics.

(Shortform note: The purely mechanical “computer” that Feynman worked on was nothing like the digital computers of today....

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary Back to Academia

After the intense pace and pressure of working on the Manhattan Project, Feynman had to readjust to the life of an ordinary research professor. Feynman describes his difficulties finding his scientific inspiration again as he reentered the academic world. First, he had to learn what it meant to be a teacher before finding the place that would become his academic home and doing the work that would earn his Nobel Prize.

Feynman’s first position after leaving Los Alamos was a professorship at Cornell University. There, he had to start his life over, having lost his wife and his four-year wartime job. He had a hard time motivating himself to do research, so instead he focused on teaching. Feynman says that since he was young and inexperienced, he didn’t appreciate how much energy went into devising lessons and classes. When it came to doing research, he felt like a burned-out fraud, when in fact he was making great strides in honing his teaching skills. It was only when a close friend told him as much that he stopped feeling guilty about not producing the next breakthrough in physics.

(Shortform note: The feeling of inadequacy Feynman describes is now...

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary Curiosity and Persistence

When Feynman talks about his life, one trait that stands out is his determination to understand how and why things work. He applied his curiosity to everything in life, not merely his scientific endeavors, and coupled it with a dogged persistence that made him stand out from his peers, often in unusual ways. Feynman’s childhood curiosity led him to pursue an education in math and science, but as an adult his curious nature expanded his horizons into fields such as safecracking and artistic expression.

Feynman recalls that as far back as his early teens, he was already tinkering with electronics. For him, it was more like play than formalized science or engineering. He didn’t follow any standard procedures—instead, he fiddled with wires, gears, and bulbs and observed what worked and what didn’t. He bought broken radios and tried to fix them, ran electrical wires all over his home, devised his own burglar alarm system, and almost inadvertently set his house on fire. Every project, both his failures and successes, was accomplished by nonstop trial and error. What Feynman took away from his early years was that persistence is the key to solving problems.

(Shortform note:...

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary The Importance of Teaching

While Feynman injected his lifelong learning with a casual sense of fun and exploration, one thing he took very seriously was his role as a teacher. Feynman explains that teaching serves two vital functions in his life: It keeps him engaged with the underlying principles of his field, and it allows him to make a positive contribution to the world. In his memoir, he describes the personal benefits he derives from teaching and highlights two specific examples where his beliefs on the subject clashed with those of others, once in Brazil and once in California.

Feynman is insistent that he’d never consider working in a nonteaching position. From a purely personal perspective, it forces him to review and reassess everything he assumes that he knows about the field of physics. He finds that the process of teaching those ideas will occasionally lead to questioning them and finding new approaches to problems and theories that wouldn’t have occurred to him otherwise. Teaching also keeps his mind active on those occasions when he doesn’t have a pressing theoretical problem to solve. In other words, **teaching is good for the mind, as much for the instructor as it is for the...

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Summary Having Fun

While Feynman took his stance on scientific integrity and the importance of education seriously, he was never very serious about himself or his importance to the world. In fact, Feynman states that not feeling responsible for the world is his secret to happiness. Instead, Feynman talks about being open to new experiences, grabbing opportunities as they appear, and having the confidence to fake his way through.

He learned his first lessons about loosening up in college, where his fraternity brothers taught him how to socialize and dance. Thanks to this, one time Feynman accidentally found himself at a dance party for deaf students. Instead of leaving, Feynman relaxed into the occasion, despite feeling like a traveler in a foreign country. Over time, Feynman says that he learned there are many interesting experiences in life if you’re patient enough to wait for them and go along when they present themselves.

(Shortform note: Though Feynman may come across in his memoir as an adventurous person, he’s clear that for the most part, he allowed adventure to come to him. In The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath assert...

Shortform Exercise: Look Back on the Joy of Learning

Through his lifelong love of solving puzzles and figuring things out, Richard Feynman exemplified the notion that curiosity, persistence, and fun go hand-in-hand. Think about the times in your life when you’ve felt driven to solve some puzzle or learn something new, and how the process of discovery made you feel.

Describe a skill or an area of knowledge (such as painting, trading stocks, or driving a car) that you felt an urge to master at some point in your life. What process did you use to go about learning?