Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman!

Amazing read! Concise, witty, random memoirs of Nobel laureate Richard Feynman told in a very engaging manner.

I am so impressed by Mr. Feynman, who seems to have such a wonderful approach to life! Mundane stuff which might not even provoke any interest in most of the humans, are actually source of fun to his persona. Ever willing to learn and try out new things, enjoying whatever venture he takes up.

He seemed to have picked up so many things not to ace in them, but just to have fun learning them. Like when he had to visit Brazil or Japan for some work, he took up learning Portuguese and Japanese respectively, just because he was going there and wanted to mix up with the local people. Then when he was in Brazil since he was interested in Samba music, he picked up an instrument called frigideira and became a part of some local carnival band. He also played drums and kept experimenting with various rhythms. Not that he could read music or anything, just that he enjoyed playing drums, could make out different rhythms, and was decent enough to give music to some ballet performances.

He loved trying out anything that intrigued or interested him. Be it hypnosis or hallucinations in the sensory deprivation tanks or an art like painting. He used to consider himself mediocre in drawing/painting etc and once just for fun had a deal with one of his painter friends that they would teach other Physics & drawing respectively. And that’s how started what came to be known as “Paintings by Ofey”. Cool right!

Even in college/post graduation, he not only learnt his core subject physics, but also attended some lectures and participated in experiments in other fields like philosophy, biology etc, just out of curiosity. Physics, he simply loved. He was very well known for his teaching methods, his lectures, because they didn’t follow any conventional rote approach but rather he would make physics fun for his students. And just imagine he had Einstein attending his first technical seminar given in Princeton as a student. Gosh!

Since his childhood itself, he had this hunger for learning and penchant for trying out things. He had a so called lab as a kid, where he used to keep experimenting different things, like seeing various stuff under his microscope, or experimenting with ants, trying to observe and manipulate their behavior. Later on when he was working in Los Alamos on the atomic bomb, he observed that the file cabinets used to store “confidential” information were not really safe and that triggered his stint as a safe cracker, and a pretty good one at that.

Reading these memoirs made me wonder how can one person do so much in a lifetime? It’s impressive! It is just so pleasing to read about his approach. And the entire book is written in such light easy going manner that it makes a very wonderful read.