The Beat of a Different Drum

Few would argue that Richard Feynman was one of the greatest American-born theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, and fewer still would dispute that he was the most iconoclastic. A true original, Feynman was both an inspired, Nobel-prize winning pioneer, and a born showman. The Beat of a Different Drum is a superb account of Feynman's life and work, encompassing a singular career that spanned from the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alomos to the frontiers of our...
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Few would argue that Richard Feynman was one of the greatest American-born theoretical physicists of the twentieth century, and fewer still would dispute that he was the most iconoclastic. A true original, Feynman was both an inspired, Nobel-prize winning pioneer, and a born showman. The Beat of a Different Drum is a superb account of Feynman's life and work, encompassing a singular career that spanned from the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Los Alomos to the frontiers of our understanding of the universe.
The first biography to offer deep insight into both Feynman's scientific achievements and his personal life, this definitive work is written by Jagdish Mehra. An accomplished physicist and historian of science in his own right, Mehra knew Feynman for thirty years, and their friendship deeply informs all aspects of the book. Feynman invited Mehra to spend three weeks with him shortly before his death in 1988, and after Feynman died, following a ten year battle against cancer, Mehra interviewed almost eighty of his friends and colleagues. They share their recollections of Feynman from his precocious childhood in Queens, New York, to his final days, painting an unforgettable portrait of a scientist who insisted throughout his life on taking the whole of nature as the arena of his science and his imagination.