Richard Feynman was an enigmatic genius, full of contradictions, who made extraordinary science look magically easy. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist was known for his humble roots and his bravado, sexism along with generous support for women academicians, a keen desire to demystify and help others with physics as well as sometimes venomous dismissal of rivals’ explanations.
Feynman was an art-lover and amateur painter, and one of his monumental achievements, expressing particle physics interactions as the lines and squiggles of “Feynman diagrams”, seems, at first glance, as straightforward as doodling. In truth, the figures represent tricky, powerful maths. Such simple tools of surprising versatility offer an emblem of their developer’s way of thinking.
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