Today would have been Richard Feynman's 107th birthday. There was a certain good feeling about reading Godel, Escher, Bach while thinking of him. This was of course a physics Nobel Prize winner who took a year off to study biology while at Cal Tech and almost solved the riddle of the DNA double helix before Watson and Crick did - and he would have too if his year "off" didn't run out.
Feynman was notoriously famous for working on problems like the structure of DNA and then just putting it aside in a file. His file cabinet is said to be chock full of such half-finished problems. I have long thought that a great use for AI would be to put this amazing computing power to work to solve these "files" for the benefit of mankind.
As always I recommend the book Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman in his honor.
I would also recommend the essay What Impossible Meant to Feynman. Often when I learn something new I'd find myself exclaiming "Impossible!"
Finishing, and recommend, "George Washington's Secret Six." Ordered "Surely, , ,"
ReplyDeleteRead the Secret Six. Liked it. Good history and relatively short.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to look back and see that he was in the Manhattan Project. Makes me feel old.
ReplyDeleteThink I started feeling old when strangers started calling me "sir." Feynman was an important part of the Manhattan Project. He's shown in the movie Oppenheimer playing bongos in the background because they had to put him in film but he didn't take up bongos until years later.
ReplyDeleteBTW - we are old :)