There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom

It has been a while since I posted and I thought it was time I raise the intellectual credentials of this blog. So I thought I would start off by posting a blog that links the American crime series Numbers, Chaos theory and physics in the 60's. The common denominator in all of the above is of course Richard Feynman. You all knew that didn't you.

Those who may have read James Gleick book on the emergence of Chaos Theory (Chaos Theory, The Making of a New Science) will know of course know of Gleick's admiration for the work of Mr Feynman. The American crime series Numbers is also fond of quoting Feynman at suitable moments as they break off into their wizzy let Hollywood explain particle physics to you kind of way.

The Wikipedia article on Feynman describes him as perhaps the most famous scientist in the 60's. Famed as a lecturer and teacher of the highest calbre, the book of his lectures (The Feynman Lectures on Physics) is still in print and is regarded as one of the most accessible undergraduate textbooks even today.

He was also regarded as an eccentric and free spirit. He was a prankster, juggler, safecracker, proud amateur painter, and bongo player. He liked to pursue a variety of seemingly unrelated interests, such as art, percussion, Maya hieroglyphics and lock picking. 

An all round Renaissance man, he was also a scientist of the highest calibre. He got a perfect score for his Princeton University entrance exams and in 1965 he won the Nobel prize for Physics.

He was however also deeply involved in life and was as far from being locked away in an ivory tower as it is possible to imagine. His junior role on the Manhattan project that developed the atomic bomb during WWII is one example. Another was his role in 1986 on the Rogers Commission into the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster just 2 years before his death in 1988

He was perhaps one of the first true popularisers of science. He had a reputation for taking great care to make his explanations of complex mathematics and physics accessible and understandable even to undergraduates, that being his test of whether a topic was understood. To espouse a philosophy that sought to be both at the "top table" so to speak in his field and actively contribute to "deepening" the understanding yet still make diligent efforts to include all in his endevours and broaden their understanding speaks volumes for the man

The name of this blog is the name of a lecture that Feynman gave in 1959 which became famous as one the intellectual origins of nanotechnology. I think it is rather wonderful that one can find these sorts of things on the web; not just the "someone said something about something" type of information but the primary source material too.

http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

A clue to how prescient Feynman was is given by the fact that the prize Feynman offers in his lecture was claimed just 11 months later in November 1960. Read the terms of the challenge again and think about what wasn't available in 1960!