Genius

Richard Feynman was a magician who, to his colleagues, embodied the idea of innovation: someone who did things nobody else could do and that seemed completely unexpected. The path he cleared for twentieth-century physics led from the making of the atomic bomb to a Nobel Prize-winning theory of quantum electrodynamics to his devastating exposé of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. At the same time, Feynman established a reputation as an eccentric showman, who, as well as being a master safecracker and bongo player, was a master seducer. In this biography—which was nominated for a National Book Award—author James Gleick unravels the dense skein of Feynman's thought and character in a book that is full of apparent paradoxes but also very lucid and compassionate.