Weird And Wonderful
The life and work of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman are celebrated in a new show at ArtScience Museum
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Helmi Yusof
IN THE 1980S YOU COULDN'T be in the field of science and technology without some classmate or colleague raving about a book titled Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman!: Adventures Of A Curious Character. Some might think a collection of personal stories by the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman would not find a large readership. But the memoir was a bestseller around the world and was displayed prominently in Singapore bookstores like Times and MPH.
Feynman was a pioneer of quantum mechanics. He transformed our understanding of quantum mechanics, that study of nature's behaviour at the smallest level of atoms and subatomic particles. Despite the complexity of these ideas, he was always able to explain them in a fun and engaging way. His book is divided into amusing chapters such as He Fixes Radios By Thinking!, Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake and I Want My Dollar!, and spawned the sequel What Do You Care What Other People Think?.
Science aside, he was an avid painter, an expert bongo player and a raconteur. If Einstein popularised the image of the scientist as a brusque introvert who rarely combs his hair, Feynman remade the image of the scientist as a man who's obsessed with science, but also loves to dress up, party, flirt and pull a prank. Who doesn't love a man about town?
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