I've heard that Murray Gell-Mann said of this book that "Jim Gleick has written a biography about Feynman's genius in order to illustrate his own". A bit backhanded, perhaps, but it captures the essence well: it's an extraordinary book about an extraordinary person. The best biography I've ever read, along with Skidelsky's one-volume Keynes.
Feynman’s life (and various takes on it) have always been fascinating to me. This is a very, very good book for anyone of an inquisitive nature (technical or otherwise) to read.
This book had such a big impact on me. Really helped fuel my love of science and gave me a sense of the scientific community as a special group of people.
> He joined a fraternity, one of the two that took in Jews.<p>This was a surprising reminder that things were very different in 1935.<p>I wonder, is there any group like this today? “One of the two that took in X” for any X seems like an interesting formula for locating outliers, whether good or bad.<p>A lot of nasty examples come to mind, but it’s hard to know how Jews were regarded at the time. I wonder what the official justification was for denying access to Feynman.<p>(I’m half Jewish on my father’s side, and I only discovered this by accident a few years ago. So I’ve been trying to research my heritage wherever I can.)
This is amazing, I don't like the part about womanizing behaviour etc, I think it should be omitted from the article, other than that 10/10 autobiography.