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Based on the lectures Richard Feynman gave at the California Institute of Technology in the early 1960s, put together by Feynman, Robert Leighton, and Matthew Sands. On one hand The Feynman Lectures cover the topics of a typical two-year introductory course in physics: Vol. 1. Mainly mechanics, radiation, and heat; Vol. 2. Mainly electromagnetism and matter; Vol. 3. Quantum mechanics. On the other hand they have nothing in common with the usual introductions and may very well be the most inspiring, witty book ever written about physics. Feynman never cared for conventional thinking and the Lectures, like all of his work, leave no room for smattering - or conceit. For every phenomenon he seeks a deep, true understanding instead just of rattling off some formulas, and the clarity of his thinking shines through every page. Whilst maybe quite challenging as a stand-alone introductory textbook, The Feynman Lectures allowed many scientists to really understand for the first time what they merely learned before.
Besides that, no other physics textbook written by a Nobel Price winner has a photograph of the author playing bongo in the preface.
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Sheer genius. And he was a master safecracker, too.
Unmatched indeed. Who else cracked the safe that held the plans for The Bomb? Also a successful bongo player and painter :)
I see you know your Feynman too! Alas, my copies of the Lectures are in storage far from where I am and I haven't read them for years… I got them twenty years ago when I got a job which involved teaching Physics. Brilliantly entertaining stuff. A great loss.
I am in complete agreement with the spirit of that.
My equivalent university experience was being "taught" differential equations by a divot with a doctorate who couldn't (apparently) tell the difference between a first and a second differential.
Feynman is one of those rare people of whom it is worth finding out everything he said or wrote.
I have his biography somewhere, too...
Whoops! Differential? I meant derivative. I'm not editing that out silently because that would make it a dishonest mistake.
I've just looked up F. Hirzebruch on wikipedia; he certainly looks intelligent! I hold both my hands up here and say that this is maths I know nothing about; I can talk (I hope!) intelligently about complex numbers - and I loved finding out that the exponential function was periodic (with period 2πi), but only from the complex point of view - but that's about as high up in the tree that I dare go on my own!
I had never heard of this before, but I reserved it in the library today, since two folks of taste seem to approve of it.
They must be very expensive to buy these days... just a sec... I've just read under $64 at Amazon. That's actually not bad - for three volumes of sheer genius!
Still... much better to borrow the library copy first!
The autobiography's a hoot in places, too. I particularly liked the story where a (western) lady approached Feynman and spoke to him in Chinese - one of his friends had arranged this to see what he would do. Feynman without a flicker made something up and replied with tones that sounded like Chinese, and the lady said: "I knew this would happen! I speak Mandarin and he speaks Cantonese!"
It might be the other way round, but I don't care.
I'm reading these now. Really good so far.
And thanks for those links, belacqua - I'll watch those later.
GOtta say that I also like Feynman. Read his autobiography and then got an audio of his lectures in Brazil. I'm particularly fond of his views on Culture and Society (I'm trained in Archaeology). The physics was a bit beyond me mathematically but he made complex things simple to understand. He deserves more recognition.