I will never not upvote stories on Feynman. I’ve read all the books and he was an extraordinary man who brought an ability to describe complicated topics at a layman’s level. It’s true that he didn’t have some of the super core contributions to scientists that some of his peers did, but the levity and abilities he brought to the field were extraordinary. Truly an amazing figure.
His autobiography books condense key insights into short anecdotes, that feel pretty much like parables. It is really a practical book to learn to think by yourself, showing how easy it is to question everything around you, and have a scientific mind. For example his approach to how to do 'soft sciences' (the process to formulate hypothesis, to make it refutable, etc) can spare you reading many dense volumes. Oh, and the cargo-culting concept, once you know it you see it everywhere. In short, it is so easy and fun to read that it's definitely a must read for anyone.
I have thought about the cargo cult every day for about a year and a half now, when people are still disinfecting everything constantly over a year after we learned that surfaces aren't how covid spreads. Will we even remember where this came from in a few years when we're still doing this stuff? Nope, just a cargo cult now.
I decided that I had to work in science or technology when I was 14 after reading his memoirs. (I didn't get into programming until later.) I think many on this site are in the same boat!
Yes I think that's true. And I wonder how much of the background radiation of dissatisfaction in our field can be traced to many of us getting into it as the culmination of an early interest in (or obsession with) math and science, but then discovering that most of the jobs require a bunch of product work which is not actually very technical. For me, I still get satisfaction in the constant micro problem solving inherent in programming, but it's not the kind of big problems I dreamed of figuring out while reading Feynman late into the night as a teenager.
Anyone interested in diagrams should consider reading "Drawing Theories Apart
The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics" at some point. You don't have to be at an expert level (though it certainly helps) to understand the majority of it.
