Surely You're 100, Mr. Feynman!

A hundred years ago today, Richard Philips Feynman was born in Queens, New York, and physics had no idea what was coming its way.

Feynman was among the developers of the atomic bomb used against the Japanese in World War II, but his most lasting contributions to physics were his work on quantum electrodynamics and some works on physics itself written for lay readers. He was, in a way, Stephen Hawking before Stephen Hawking came along.

The technical side of his achievements had to do with the way light and matter interacted on the most basic, or quantum, level. Feynman built on the work of Paul Dirac and was awarded a co-Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 alongside Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, and Julian Schwinger. He was sometimes criticized as a misogynist or someone who thought poorly of women, but it might be noted that Feynman was the one who encouraged his sister Joan to study astronomy and astrophysics. He was an imperfect human being, of which there is no shortage.

Feynman was almost certainly one of the highest profile physicists working during his time, with a fame outside the scientific arena that stemmed from a volume of autobiography from which this post title is cribbed: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. Six Easy Pieces and What Do You Care What Other People Think are among his other works, as are the well-received recordings, The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Sometimes when remarking on someone who has gone on, we (rhetorically) ask what the world do now without this titanic hero or incredible genius. The implication is, of course, that neither will do well. Feynman would be among the many to demur from that statement. He would suggest that the world will get along fine without him, which is probably true.

But if he hadn't been here to explain it, on the other hand...