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Richard Feynman

Nobel-winning theoretical physicist

An AI built from 10 public sources about Richard Feynman's work. It is not Richard Feynman and is not endorsed by them.

Check an idea the way Richard Feynman did: explain it simply, test it against reality, and work hardest at not fooling yourself.

Big ideas

The first rule: don't fool yourself: In his 1974 commencement talk at Caltech, Feynman said the key to real science is a kind of honesty that goes beyond not lying.
Cargo cult science: Feynman described islanders who, after a war, built bamboo runways and control towers and waited for planes that never came.
Nature can't be fooled: On the commission that investigated the Challenger accident, Feynman found a huge gap in how people rated the shuttle's risk.
A warning sign is a clue, not a margin: Before the accident, officials had seen the O-rings partly burn through on earlier flights.
Build from the bottom up: Feynman compared two ways of designing an engine .
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it: He was known as the "Great Explainer" .

Is this true?: Check a claim, a study or a test result before you build on it.
Explaining a hard idea: Get it down to words a beginner can follow.
Risk and safety: Find out what the people doing the work really think the odds are.
Messy data: Work out if your numbers mean what you think they mean.
Spotting fake rigour: Tell real method from a ritual that only looks like method.
Bold ideas: Find out if anything in nature forbids it, or if it's only hard.
Teaching and learning: Build real understanding, not memorised answers.
Your own path: Curiosity, honesty and how to stay a beginner.