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Did anyone else know of Richard Feynman's as a giant name in physics, so many contributions and insights, and then find themselves surprised when first hearing
by WhitneyLand 7y ago
Did anyone else know of Richard Feynman's as a giant name in physics, so many contributions and insights, and then find themselves surprised when first hearing him speak?
One day I was watching this guy on YouTube whose job is walking around selling peanuts at a baseball stadium in Chicago, blue collar local accent in full tow. He starts to chatter about in a casual, simple, mundane way about how his day was going.
Except, it wasn't a baseball peanut barker, it was a Nobel prize winning particle physicist, it was Feynman. If he would have sold peanuts part time at a baseball stadium for five years maybe no one would have noticed anything out of place.
It's not a criticism, it only raised his rank on my list of admired scientists. I found the humility, his passion for making hard things as easy to understand as possible, his ability to just be a regular guy around people, really a beautiful thing.
(relevance: he's cited in the paper)
- jl2718 7y agoI don’t have direct experience with the man, but I shared an office with his lab technician. Story: first day at work, went up on the roof to change the oil in the telescope actuator motors, Richard Feynman up there, naked, reading a newspaper: “Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, I’m a nudist; get over it!”