> Skip to content
  • Published: 16 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781784877798
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

Adventures of a Curious Character




A portrait of the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, we see the wisdom, humour and curiosity of Richard Feynman through a series of conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY BILL GATES

In this warm, insightful portrait of the Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, we see the wisdom, humour and curiosity of Richard Feynman through a series of conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, but he was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure. An artist, safecracker, practical joker and storyteller, Feynman's life was a series of combustible combinations made possible by his unique mixture of high intelligence, unquenchable curiosity and eternal scepticism.

Over a period of years, Feynman's conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear here, little changed from their spoken form, giving a wise, funny, passionate and totally honest self-portrait of one of the greatest men of our age.

  • Published: 16 July 2022
  • ISBN: 9781784877798
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99

About the author

Richard P Feynman

Richard Feynman was, until his death in 1988, the most famous physicist in the world. Only an infinitesimal part of the general population could understand his mathematical physics, but his outgoing and sunny personality, his gift for exposition, his habit of playing the bongo drums, and his testimony to the Presidential Commission on the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster turned him into a celebrity.

Freeman Dyson, of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, called him 'the most original mind of his generation', while in its obituary The New York Times described him as 'arguably the most brilliant, iconoclastic and influential of the postwar generation of theoretical physicists'.

Also by Richard P Feynman

See all

Praise for Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if only you worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician

Hans Bethe, theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate

A storyteller in the tradition of Mark Twain. He proves once again that it is possible to laugh out loud and scratch your head at the same time

New York Times Book Review

Quintessential Feynman - funny, brilliant, bawdy...enormously entertaining

New Yorker

Buzzes with energy, anecdote and life. It almost makes you want to become a physicist

Science Digest