“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

by Richard Phillips Feynman

  We wandered around a little more, and came to a big building, some important building of the campus. We went in, and there were two couches in the hallway. The other guy said, “I’m sleeping here!” and collapsed onto the couch.

  I didn’t want to get into trouble, so I found a janitor down in the basement and asked him whether I could sleep on the couch, and he said “Sure.”

  The next morning I woke up, found a place to eat breakfast, and started rushing around as fast as I could to find out when my first class was going to be. I ran into the physics department: “What time is my first class? Did I miss it?”

  The guy said, “You have nothing to worry about. Classes don’t start for eight days.”

  That was a shock to me! The first thing I said was, “Well, why did you tell me to be here a week ahead?”

  “I thought you’d like to come and get acquainted, find a place to stay and settle down before you begin your classes.”

  I was back to civilization, and I didn’t know what it was!

  Professor Gibbs sent me to the Student Union to find a place to stay. It’s a big place, with lots of students milling around. I go up to a big desk that says HOUSING and I say, “I’m new, and I’m looking for a room.”

  The guy says, “Buddy, the housing situation in Ithaca is tough. In fact, it’s so tough that, believe it or not, a professor had to sleep on a couch in this lobby last night!”

  I look around, and it’s the same lobby! I turn to him and I say, “Well, I’m that professor, and the professor doesn’t want to do it again!”

  My early days at Cornell as a new professor were interesting and sometimes amusing. A few days after I got there, professor Gibbs came into my office and explained to me that ordinarily we don’t accept students this late in the term, but in a few cases, when the applicant is very, very good, we can accept him. He handed me an application and asked me to look it over.

  He comes back: “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think he’s first rate, and I think we ought to accept him. I think we’re lucky to get him here.”

  “Yes, but did you look at his picture?”

  “What possible difference could that make?” I exclaimed.

  “Absolutely none, sir! Glad to hear you say that. I wanted to see what kind of a man we had for our new professor.” Gibbs liked the way I came right back at him without thinking to myself, “He’s the head of the department, and I’m new here, so I’d better be careful what I say.” I haven’t got the speed to think like that; my first reaction is immediate, and I say the first thing that comes into my mind.

  Then another guy came into my office. He wanted to talk to me about philosophy, and I can’t really quite remember what he said, but he wanted me to join some kind of a club of professors. The club was some sort of anti-Semitic club that thought the Nazis weren’t so bad. He tried to explain to me how there were too many Jews doing this and that—some crazy thing. So I waited until he got all finished, and said to him, “You know, you made a big mistake: I was brought up in a Jewish family.” He went out, and that was the beginning of my loss of respect for some of the professors in the humanities, and other areas, at Cornell University.

  I was starting over, after my wife’s death, and I wanted to meet some girls. In those days there was a lot of social dancing. So there were a lot of dances at Cornell, mixers to get people together, especially for the freshmen and others returning to school.

  I remember the first dance that I went to. I hadn’t been dancing for three or four years while I was at Los Alamos; I hadn’t even been in society. So I went to this dance and danced as best I could, which I thought was reasonably all right. You can usually tell somebody’s dancing with you and they feel pretty good about it.

  As we danced I would talk with the girl a little bit; she would ask me some questions about myself, and I would ask some about her. But when I wanted to dance with a girl I had danced with before, I had to look for her.

  “Would you like to dance again?”

  “No, I’m sorry; I need some air.” Or, “Well, I have to go to the ladies’ room”—this and that excuse, from two or three girls in a row! What was the matter with me? Was my dancing lousy? Was my personality lousy?

  I danced with another girl, and again came the usual questions: “Are you a student, or a graduate student?” (There were a lot of students who looked old then because they had been in the army.)

  “No, I’m a professor.”

  “Oh? A professor of what?”

  “Theoretical physics.”

  “I suppose you worked on the atomic bomb.”

  “Yes, I was at Los Alamos during the war.”

  She said, “You’re a damn liar!”—and walked off.

  That relieved me a great deal. It explained everything. I had been telling all the girls the simple-minded, stupid truth, and I never knew what the trouble was. It was perfectly obvious that I was being shunned by one girl after another when I did everything perfectly nice and natural and was polite, and answered the questions. Everything would look very pleasant, and then thwoop—it wouldn’t work. I didn’t understand it until this woman fortunately called me a damn liar.

  So then I tried to avoid all the questions, and it had the opposite effect: “Are you a freshman?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Are you a graduate student?”

  “No.”

  “What are you?”

  “I don’t want to say.”

  “Why won’t you tell us what you are?”

  “I don’t want to …”—and they’d keep talking to me!

  I ended up with two girls over at my house and one of them told me that I really shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about being a freshman; there were plenty of guys my age who were starting out in college, and it was really all right. They were sophomores, and were being quite motherly, the two of them. They worked very hard on my psychology, but I didn’t want the situation to get so distorted and so misunderstood, so I let them know I was a professor. They were very upset that I had fooled them. I had a lot of trouble being a young professor at Cornell.

  Anyway, I began to teach the course in mathematical methods in physics, and I think I also taught another course—electricity and magnetism, perhaps. I also intended to do research. Before the war, while I was getting my degree, I had many ideas: I had invented new methods of doing quantum mechanics with path integrals, and I had a lot of stuff I wanted to do.

  At Cornell, I’d work on preparing my courses, and I’d go over to the library a lot and read through the Arabian Nights and ogle the girls that would go by. But when it came time to do some research, I couldn’t get to work. I was a little tired; I was not interested; I couldn’t do research! This went on for what I felt was a few years, but when I go back and calculate the timing, it couldn’t have been that long. Perhaps nowadays I wouldn’t think it was such a long time, but then, it seemed to go on for a very long time. I simply couldn’t get started on any problem: I remember writing one or two sentences about some problem in gamma rays and then I couldn’t go any further. I was convinced that from the war and everything else (the death of my wife) I had simply burned myself out.

  I now understand it much better. First of all, a young man doesn’t realize how much time it takes to prepare good lectures, for the first time, especially—and to give the lectures, and to make up exam problems, and to check that they’re sensible ones. I was giving good courses, the kind of courses where I put a lot of thought into each lecture. But I didn’t realize that that’s a lot of work! So here I was, “burned out,” reading the Arabian Nights and feeling depressed about myself.

  During this period I would get offers from different places—universities and industry—with salaries higher than my own. And each time I got something like that I would get a little more depressed. I would say to myself, “Look, they’re giving me these wonderful offers, but they don’t realize that I’m burned out! Of course I can’t accept them. They expec
t me to accomplish something, and I can’t accomplish anything! I have no ideas …”

  Finally there came in the mail an invitation from the Institute for Advanced Study: Einstein.. von Neumann … Wyl … all these great minds! They write to me, and invite me to be a professor there! And not just a regular professor. Somehow they knew my feelings about the Institute: how it’s too theoretical; how there’s not enough real activity and challenge. So they write, “We appreciate that you have a considerable interest in experiments and in teaching, so we have made arrangements to create a special type of professorship, if you wish: half professor at Princeton University, and half at the Institute.”

  Institute for Advanced Study! Special exception! A position better than Einstein, even! It was ideal; it was perfect; it was absurd!

  It was absurd. The other offers had made me feel worse, up to a point. They were expecting me to accomplish something. But this offer was so ridiculous, so impossible for me ever to live up to, so ridiculously out of proportion. The other ones were just mistakes; this was an absurdity! I laughed at it while I was shaving, thinking about it.

  And then I thought to myself, “You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!”

  It was a brilliant idea: You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.

  It wasn’t a failure on my part that the Institute for Advanced Study expected me to be that good; it was impossible. It was clearly a mistake—and the moment I appreciated the possibility that they might be wrong, I realized that it was also true of all the other places, including my own university. I am what I am, and if they expected me to be good and they’re offering me some money for it, it’s their hard luck.

  Then, within the day, by some strange miracle—perhaps he overheard me talking about it, or maybe he just understood me—Bob Wilson, who was head of the laboratory there at Cornell, called me in to see him. He said, in a serious tone, “Feynman, you’re teaching your classes well; you’re doing a good job, and we’re very satisfied. Any other expectations we might have are a matter of luck. When we hire a professor, we’re taking all the risks. If it comes out good, all right. If it doesn’t, too bad. But you shouldn’t worry about what you’re doing or not doing.” He said it much better than that, and it released me from the feeling of guilt.

  Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing—it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I’d see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn’t have to do it; it wasn’t important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn’t make any difference: I’d invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

  So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I’ll never accomplish anything, I’ve got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

  Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

  I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate. I discover that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! Then I thought, “Is there some way I can see in a more fundamental way, by looking at the forces or the dynamics, why it’s two to one?”

  I don’t remember how I did it, but I ultimately worked out what the motion of the mass particles is, and how all the accelerations balance to make it come out two to one.

  I still remember going to Hans Bethe and saying, “Hey, Hans! I noticed something interesting. Here the plate goes around so, and the reason it’s two to one is …” and I showed him the accelerations.

  He says, “Feynman, that’s pretty interesting, but what’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?”

  “Hah!” I say. “There’s no importance whatsoever. I’m just doing it for the fun of it.” His reaction didn’t discourage me; I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked.

  I went on to work out equations of wobbles. Then I thought about how electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there’s the Dirac Equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was “playing”—working, really—with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things.

  It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

  Any Questions?

  When I was at Cornell I was asked to give a series of lectures once a week at an aeronautics laboratory in Buffalo. Cornell had made an arrangement with the laboratory which included evening lectures in physics to be given by somebody from the university. There was some guy already doing it, but there were complaints, so the physics department came to me. I was a young professor at the time and I couldn’t say no very easily, so I agreed to do it.

  To get to Buffalo they had me go on a little airline which consisted of one airplane. It was called Robinson Airlines (it later became Mohawk Airlines) and I remember the first time I flew to Buffalo, Mr. Robinson was the pilot. He knocked the ice off the wings and we flew away.

  All in all, I didn’t enjoy the idea of going to Buffalo every Thursday night. The university was paying me $35 in addition to my expenses. I was a Depression kid, and I figured I’d save the $35, which was a sizable amount of money in those days.

  Suddenly I got an idea: I realized that the purpose of the $35 was to make the trip to Buffalo more attractive, and the way to do that is to spend the money. So I decided to spend the $35 to entertain myself each time I went to Buffalo, and see if I could make the trip worthwhile.

  I didn’t have much experience with the rest of the world. Not knowing how to get started, I asked the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport to guide me through the ins and outs of entertaining myself in Buffalo. He was very helpful, and I still remember his name—Marcuso, who drove car number 169. I would always ask for him when I came into the airport on Thursday nights.

  As I was going to give my first lecture I asked Marcuso, “Where’s an interesting bar where lots of things are going on?” I thought that things went on in bars.

  “The Alibi Room,” he said. “It’s a lively place where you can meet lots of people. I’ll take you there after your lecture.”

  After the lecture Marcuso picked me up and drove me to the Alibi Room. On the way, I say, “Listen, I’m gonna have to ask for some kind of drink. What’s the name of a good whiskey?”

  “Ask for Black and White, water on the side,” he counseled.

  The Alibi Room was an elegant place with lots of people and lots of activity. The women were dressed in furs, everybody was friendly, and the phones were ringing all the time.

  I walked up to the bar and ordered my Black and White, water on the side. The bartender was very friendly quickly found a beautiful woman to
sit next to me, and introduced her. I bought her drinks. I liked the place and decided to come back the following week.

  Every Thursday night I’d come to Buffalo and be driven in car number 169 to my lecture and then to the Alibi Room. I’d walk into the bar and order my Black and White, water on the side. After a few weeks of this it got to the point where as soon as I would come in, before I reached the bar, there would be a Black and White, water on the side, waiting for me. “Your regular, sir,’ was the bartender’s greeting.

  I’d take the whole shot glass down at once, to show I was a tough guy, like I had seen in the movies, and then I’d sit around for about twenty seconds before I drank the water. After a while I didn’t even need the water.

  The bartender always saw to it that the empty chair next to mine was quickly filled by a beautiful woman, and everything would start off all right, but just before the bar closed, they all had to go off somewhere. I thought it was possibly because I was getting pretty drunk by that time.

  One time, as the Alibi Room was closing, the girl I was buying drinks for that night suggested we go to another place where she knew a lot of people. It was on the second floor of some other building which gave no hint that there was a bar upstairs. All the bars in Buffalo had to close at two o’clock, and all the people in the bars would get sucked into this big hall on the second floor, and keep right on going—illegally, of course.

  I tried to figure out a way that I could stay in bars and watch what was going on without getting drunk. One night I noticed a guy who had been there a lot go up to the bar and order a glass of milk. Everybody knew what his problem was: he had an ulcer, the poor fella. That gave me an idea.

  The next time I come into the Alibi Room the bartender says, “The usual, sir?”

  “No. Coke. Just plain Coke,” I say, with a disappointed look on my face.

  The other guys gather around and sympathize: “Yeah, I was on the wagon three weeks ago,” one says. “It’s really tough, Dick, it’s really tough,” says another.