03/12/2025
Telling you about my boyfriend
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Would you say that someone who earned a PhD, was a professor at a
prestigious university, and won a Nobel Prize for physics had probably done a
pretty good job of tapping into his potential? How about if you also learned that
the person had been invited to help invent the first atomic bomb on the
Manhattan Project when he was only in his twenties? Thatโs a pretty strong
rรฉsumรฉ, isnโt it? What would be the key to such a personโs success? Most people
would guess intelligence. But this scientist was reputed to have an aboveaverage IQ of only 125.
Sure, he was intelligent, but the real secret to his
growth and success was an insatiable curiosity.
His name was Richard Feynman (pronounced Fine-man). The son of a
uniform salesman from New York City, he was always encouraged to ask
questions and think for himself. As a child of eleven, he built electrical circuits
and did experiments at home and soon got a reputation for being able to fix
radios. He was always exploring, learning, asking why.
He began learning algebra in elementary school. He mastered trigonometry
and both differential and integral calculus at age fifteen.
It was play for him.
When his high school physics teacher became frustrated with him, he handed
him a book, saying, โYou talk too much and you make too much noise. I know
why. Youโre bored. Study this book, and when you know everything thatโs in this
book, you can talk again.โ It was an advanced calculus book from a course for
college seniors!
Feynman devoured it. It became another tool in his toolbox for
learning about the world.
He had a lifelong love for solving puzzles and breaking codes. When he was
in high school, his classmates knew this and threw at him every kind of puzzle,
equation, geometry problem, or brainteaser that they could find. He solved them
all.
Feynmanโs desire to know why drove him to study anything and everything.
He wasnโt interested only in physics or mathematics. Any idea could spark his
interest. For example, when he studied physics as an undergraduate student at
MIT, he took a summer job as a chemist. When he was at Princeton studying for
his PhD, he would eat lunch with gradate students from other disciplines so he
could learn what questions they were asking and what problems they were trying
to solve. Because of that he ended up taking PhD-level courses in philosophy
and biology.
That curiosity continued his entire life. One summer he decided to do
advanced work in genetics.
Another time, on vacation in Guatemala, he taught
himself how to read ancient Mayan writing, which led him to make significant
mathematical and astronomical discoveries in an ancient manuscript.
He became an expert on art, learned to draw, and became good enough to have a
one-man show.
He was a lifelong learner.
Feynman did experience a brief period when his curiosity waned. It was after
the exhausting and demanding years he spent on the Manhattan Project. He went
through a kind of slump and believed that he had burned out. He lost the will to
explore. But then he figured out what the problem was. Feynman wrote,
I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with itโฆ.
It didnโt have to do with whether it was important for the development of
nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing or fun to play
with. When I was in high school, Iโd 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 didnโt have to do it; it wasnโt
important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That
didnโt make any difference: Iโd invent things and play with things for my
own entertainment.
So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out, and Iโll never
accomplish anythingโฆ Iโm going to play with physics, whenever I want to without worrying about any importance whatsoever.
That change in mind-set enabled him to rekindle his curiosity and cure his burnout.โ As a result, he started to ask why again. Soon after this, he saw
someone in the university cafeteria spin a plate by throwing it into the air. He
wondered why the plate spun and wobbled the way it did. He figured it out
mathematically and made some drawings, just for fun. The diagrams and math
he did while doing what he called โpiddling around with the wobbling plateโ are
what led to his receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics.
So he did end up doing
things that were important to science. But that occurred simply because he
wanted to know why for his own growth and satisfaction!
Feynman lived the Law of Curiosity.
