1942:
Ph.D. from Princeton; joins Manhattan Project.
1945:
Trinity Test; moves to Cornell University.
1950:
Joins Caltech as Professor of Theoretical Physics.
1965:
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
1986:
Investigates the Challenger Disaster.
Part II: The Great Laboratory
Princeton was a different beast—formal, quiet, and filled with people
like Einstein and von Neumann. I stayed there for my PhD, working
under John Wheeler. Then the war came. Before I knew it, I was in the
middle of the desert at Los Alamos. It was a strange time. We were
building a weapon that could end the world, but we were also a bunch of
young scientists living in a high-pressure pressure cooker. I became the
resident safe-cracker. It wasn't about theft; it was about showing the 'big
shots' that their security was a joke. I worked on the computations for
the bomb, watching the first blast at Trinity through a truck windshield.
When it worked, we celebrated. It was only later that the weight of what
we'd done truly sank in.
Part III: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
After the war, I ended up at Cornell and then Caltech. Caltech
became my home. I developed the Feynman Diagrams—a way to
visualize the interactions of subatomic particles that made the math
manageable. People thought they were strange at first, but they worked.
In 1965, I got the call from Sweden. The Nobel Prize in Physics. To be
honest, I didn't want the fuss. I hate honors; the real prize is the
'pleasure of finding things out.' I spent my years teaching, writing the
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