His memoirs are told by the man himself; i.e. projects the image of himself that he wants to believe he is and was edited to be read by a layperson audience, meaning that it picks out the most entertaining and relatable bits of his life rather than showcasing his towering prowess.<p>Read what other contemporary physicists thought of him instead. One doesn't get the Nobel Prize in Physics by accident.
Well, then how did Einstein get here, either? He wasn’t the greatest at math, supposedly borrowed or stole math from others etc. he merely asked some questions that nobody thought of.<p>Separate Feynman the man from his stories, as he liked to tell stories and probably liked to seem like a hick. He internalized a tremendous amount of math when young, winning awards. Rederived math and physics formalisms and could visually or acoustical visualize things like series. As he didn’t like to read the literature, he derived anything that he was told so he could understand. This was a terribly inefficient way of working but it fit his need to visualize.<p>Like Einstein and the others he had a feeling for physics and then used math as necessary. Today, people would be saying that Brian Cox was a British alternative in terms of presenting science.
In another world where, say, I was truly brilliant, I reckon I'd think and behave similarly to Feynman as I've too many diverse interests to focus continually on the same research for decades.<p>However, the ultimate 'human-thinking AI machine' of the 20th Century and perhaps of all time was John von Neumann. Not only did he have a huge range of diverse interests and a phenomenal photographic memory but he excelled <i>par excellence</i> at everything he touched.<p>As fortune would have it, this 'alien' of unbounded intelligence dropped in by chance from parts unknown.