Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine

> To find out how well this would work in practice, Feynman had to write a computer program for QCD. Since the only computer language Richard was really familiar with was Basic, he made up a parallel version of Basic in which he wrote the program and then simulated it by hand to estimate how fast it would run on the Connection Machine. I have most of Feynman's memoirs and a few of his biographies, but I only see scant…

> We tried to take advantage of Richard's talent for clarity by getting him to critique the technical presentations that we made in our product introductions. Before the commercial announcement of the Connection Machine CM-1 and all of our future products, Richard would give a sentence-by-sentence critique of the planned presentation. "Don't say `reflected acoustic wave.' Say [echo]." Or, "Forget all that `local minima' stuff. Just say there's a bubble caught in the crystal and you have to shake it…

I'm always amazed at the breadth and depth of Feynman's genius. My favorite story of Feynman is his calculation of the size of the first nuclear explosion and then driving to just a few miles outside the blast radius (much closer than his colleagues were willing to watch from). That's a level of mental confidence that I can't even begin to imagine possessing. Surely You're Joking is a great read - one of those "drop what you're doing and read…

This is probably the most important habit of Feynman, I tried to incorporate into my own life and studying: "Then he would set to work, scribbling on a pad of paper and staring at the results. While he was in the middle of this kind of puzzle solving he was impossible to interrupt. "Don't bug me. I'm busy," he would say without even looking up. Eventually he would either decide the problem was too hard (in which case he lost…