A collection of the letters of the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, edited by his daughter, Michelle Feynman, appeared in 2005 [Ref. 1]. Reviewing this book, Peter Galison of the Department of Physics, Harvard University, compares Feynman and Albert Einstein [Ref. 2].
Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman on stamps
Galison starts by saying, “Richard Feynman was a physicist’s physicist.” Next, he writes about Feynman’s contributions in fundamental physics and beyond, including his public intervention in analyzing the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster. Then, he refers to Feynman’s fame within and outside the physics community, adding, “Young physicists regularly tack a poster of Feynman above their desks. If there are posters of other Nobel prizewinners on sale, I haven’t seen them. [My note: Here is a line break] Except, of course, for Albert Einstein.” — Yes, I saw a photo of Feynman even on the desk of a young physicist at Kharkiv University in Ukraine, where another famous physicist Lev Landau had worked. —
As for Einstein, Galison refers to his iconic status extending far beyond the physics world. He writes, “And yet, since the early 1960s, generations of science students held Feynman, not Einstein, as their model and guiding star.”
Similar to physics students and physicists in earlier days, I had held Einstein as a model and guiding star. My mind changed after reading Feynman’s book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” [Ref. 3] in 1985. I was a latecomer to the community of Feynman fans despite having read the three volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics [Ref. 4] earlier than that to like them very much.
Galison compares Feynman and Einstein as follows:
Einstein never lost his fascination for philosophy; Feynman found philosophers nothing but a burden.
Einstein came to believe that physical reality lay deep in mathematical physics; Feynman never gave up hoping for a physics-driven, at bottom, by an almost tactile intuition.
Much of Einstein's life found him cast and self-cast as an oracle; Feynman preferred the persona of a fast-draw street-smart kid.
He concludes: “Yet beyond these striking differences, both Einstein and Feynman found ways to hold their own ...” — Namely, they were different and similar at the same time. —
Around the middle of his review, Galison quotes Feynman’s last letter to his first wife, Arline, written after she died of tuberculosis in June 1945. The letter ends with the words, “P. S. Please excuse me my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.” This letter plainly and movingly conveys Feynman’s sadness brought by Arline’s death.
References
M. Feynman, ed. with an introduction, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (Basic Books, New York, 2005).
P. Galison, “Letters from a hero: What made Richard Feynman so much more than a Nobel prizewinning physicist?” Nature, Vol. 436, p. 320 (2005).
R. P. Feynman, “Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character, as told to R. Leighton, ed. by E. Hutchings (W. W. Norton, New York, paperbound 1997; hardbound 1985).
R. P. Feynman, R. B. Leighton and M. Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Addison Wesley, Reading, 1963).
Note added to the revised version: This short essay originally appeared at https://ideaisaac.blogspot.com/2005/08/comparison-between-feynman-and-einstein.html on August 20, 2005, and has been one of the most viewed posts of the present author (4.17-k views). In the version given here, he made editorial changes and improvements in the text.