Monday, July 17, 2017

What Do YOU Care What Other People Think?

What Do YOU Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman  255 pp.

This is a collection of anecdotes by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman mainly about two very important periods of his life. The first half of the book concerns his unfortunately short marriage to his first wife, Arlene, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis before they married. Whenever Arlene asked him to do something and he was worried how it would look to others she would say, "What do you care what other people think?" and he would do as she asked. They had an amazing relationship in spite of her illness. She died in a hospital in Albuquerque, NM while Feynman was working in Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project. The second half concerns Feynman's work for the Rogers Commission investigating the causes of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. It was Feynman who demonstrated during a press conference how the now infamous "O-ring" failed after being exposed to the cold temperatures in Florida the morning of the disaster. He also pointed out that NASA higher-ups were more concerned with the publicity surrounding the space program than listening to the engineers and techs when problems were found.

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