In the autumn of 1939, Richard Feynman, a bold and brilliant recent graduate of MIT, arrives at John Wheeler's office at Princeton to take up duties as a teaching assistant. Wheeler, strict and meticulous, timed their interactions with a stopwatch he had placed on the table. Feynman noticed this, and at their next meeting, he brought his own cheap watch, placed it next to Wheeler's watch, and began timing the conversation. The two laughed, and a lifelong friendship was born. Although at first glance they seemed an unlikely pair, Feynman had a rough character, spoke with the accent of the working-class neighborhoods of Queens, and loved to play bongo drums, take risks, and explore remote places. Wheeler, on the other hand, was a family man, spoke softly and politely, dressed in suits, and had the manners of a minister. However, intellectually, their roles were reversed. Wheeler was a sharp-minded maverick with a plethora of wild ideas about space, time, and the universe. Feynman was very diligent in his research, wanting to prove and confirm everything on his own. However, when Feynman recognized the value of one of Wheeler's wild ideas and found that it agreed with experimental data, their collaborative efforts bore remarkable fruit. The intelligence and originality of each physicist inspired the other's imagination, leading to a reevaluation of the nature of time and reality, which proved essential for the particle physics discoveries of the late 20th century. Instead of a linear flow, Feynman's concept of "sum over histories" showed how the path a particle takes is a blend of all the possible choices it could follow. Wheeler's attempts to recreate particle physics from scratch inspired the now-iconic idea of wormholes and influenced his student Hugh Everett's Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. The two thinkers pioneered the use of diagrams and drawings to explain quantum interactions, bringing to life the now-essential Feynman diagrams that show possible paths back and forth in time for particles. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. As revealed in "Quantum Labyrinth" in an enthralling read, together, Feynman and Wheeler ensured that quantum physics would never be the same again.
Pages: 336, Year of Publication: 0108, Dimensions: 13.6x13.6cm
Number of pages
336
Cover
Soft
Year of publication
2018
Publisher
Basic Books