Richard Feynman

If you have not heard of him, he is

1. A drummer who can play Bongos
2. An artist
3. Someone who could listen to the lowest level of “rocket science” and tell NASA that they should often believe their own engineers and move the launch dates rather than the top management calling the shots based on political reasons
4. A guy who could ask the nobel prize committee if they could take away his name and not to give the award.
5. Someone who told, knowing something and knowing the name of something are totally different things .

My love for Dr Richard Feynman started with my life at IIT-Madras. If you ever wonder, I knew him and you did not; don’t worry. I did not. And, to this date; I feel it is a shame not to know him earlier enough. Everything about Feynman started with the book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” When I started reading the book, I was intrigued by the way he was telling how he played with Physics, been part of atomic project, ran experiments, played around with one of the first kind of parallel processing algorithms, cracking safe, playing Bongos and even to go to great extends on simplicity in proving questions in Physics. If you are curious, have a look at

If you are too lazy to read the book, you could try the movie “Challenger Disaster”

Two other books to read if you started liking Feynman, are Genius: The life and Science of Richard Feynman

What do you care what other people think?

He is one teacher I did not meet, but inspired and changed a lot in me. Happy teacher’s day