[Leica] Feynman

[Herbert & Lee Kanner <kanner@acm.org>]

Marvin Levi wrote:
>
>  Feynman was a scientist who happened to also know to
>  show off and act with a certain flair, and as a
>  result, came off as smarter than anybody else.
>
>  In terms of its impact on our everyday life, the
>  greatest physicist this century is none other than Dr.
>  John Bardeen. He won Nobel price TWICE, the first time
>  for the invention of the transistor, the second time
>  for the discovery, with two other fellow Univ. of
>  Illinois researchers, the BCS theory for
>  superconductivity. He was a very quiet and humble man.
>

But he didn't invent a whole new field of physics like Feynman did!
	From what i know about it.


Mark Rabiner

Portland, Oregon
USA

Herb's comment:

My physics Ph.D dates back to 1951, and I dropped out of the field by 
1958, so I could be dead wrong.  However, my strong belief is that 
quantum electrodynamics was a pretty well-developed field by the late 
'40s, although problems with infinities caused continual modification 
of the theory. I cite a tutorial paper on the subject by Enrico Fermi 
in the Reviews of Modern Physics, which I was reading when in 
graduate school.  So, this paper has to have been written at the 
latest in 1950.  Feynman wrote a book called QED, which may be a 
great exposition on the subject aimed at the layman or beginning 
student, but he certainly did not invent the field.  He is famous for 
something called Feynman Diagrams which help in the bookkeeping of 
events involving fundamental particles, real and virtual.  I never 
understood how they are used.  Friends who promised to explain them 
to me never kept the promise.

Herb

- -- 
Herbert Kanner
kanner@acm.org
650-326-8204