Portal:Physics/Selected article/Week 51, 2006

Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for expanding the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, and particle theory. For his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga; he developed a way to understand the behavior of subatomic particles using pictorial tools that later became known as Feynman diagrams.

He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Despite his prolific contributions, Feynman wrote only 37 research papers during his career. In addition to his work in pure physics, Feynman is credited with the concept and early exploration of quantum computing, and publicly envisioning nanotechnology, creation of devices at the molecular scale. He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at Caltech.

Feynman was a keen and influential popularizer of physics in both his books and lectures, notably a seminal 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom and The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a three-volume set which has become a classic text. Known for his insatiable curiosity, wit, brilliant mind and playful temperament, he is equally famous for his many adventures, detailed in his books Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, What Do You Care What Other People Think? and Tuva or Bust!. As well as being an inspirational lecturer, bongo player, notorious practical joker, and decipherer of Maya hieroglyphs, Richard Feynman was regarded as an eccentric and a free spirit. He liked to pursue multiple seemingly independent paths, such as biology, art, percussion, and lock picking. Freeman Dyson once wrote that Feynman was "half-genius, half-buffoon", but later revised this to "all-genius, all-buffoon".