Richard P. Feynman

Feynman diagrams and a workable quantum electrodynamics (1948-1949)

• QED, the theory he helped rebuild, has been tested against the electron's magnetism to about one part in a trillion, one of the closest matches between theory and experiment in science.^[3],[11]
• Between 1949 and 1954, 114 authors used Feynman diagrams in the Physical Review; the diagrams then spread to nuclear, solid-state and gravitational physics.^[10]
• The Feynman Lectures on Physics, from his 1961-64 Caltech course, have been translated into at least a dozen languages, with more than 1.5 million copies printed in English; Caltech offers them free online.^[13],[14]
• His 1959 talk 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' imagined writing and building at the scale of atoms and is often cited as an early vision of nanotechnology.^[15],[21]
• His May 1981 talk 'Simulating physics with computers' proposed using quantum machines to simulate nature; physicist John Preskill credits it with starting quantum computing as a research field.^[12]
• In 1986 his ice-water test of O-ring rubber, and his report appendix, exposed how far NASA managers' risk estimates (1 in 100,000) had drifted from their engineers' (about 1 in 100).^{[6],[16],[17]}

Feynman's main gift was a way of calculating and of thinking, not a product, so we record no benefit numbers. His diagrams remain a standard tool across particle, nuclear and solid-state physics, and QED is one of the most precisely tested theories ever built, but turning that into lives saved or dollars earned would be guesswork. The same is true of his teaching, which reached readers through more than 1.5 million English copies of his lectures; of his 1959 and 1981 talks, which pointed toward nanotechnology and quantum computing, fields built mostly by others; and of his Challenger testimony, whose effect on later safety cannot be measured. We do record one harm. As a group leader in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, he helped run the calculations behind the implosion bomb used on Nagasaki, so we credit him with 0.5 percent of the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a quarter of the share given to his division head, Hans Bethe; this is a judgment call for editors.

Fundamental scienceEducationTechnologyPeace

Each number is the laureate’s credited share of a real-world outcome, cumulative to 2025. The whole outcome, the share of credit, and the reasoning are shown so you can check the arithmetic. Outcomes shared with other laureates are counted once on the impact page.

• HarmMedium confidenceDirectSourced totalPeace

  Deaths from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki within two to four months

  750–1,230

  deaths caused, credited share

  That is 0.5% of 150,000–246,000 deaths caused since 1945.

  How this number was built

  RERF estimates acute deaths within two to four months at 90,000-166,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000-80,000 in Nagasaki, so 150,000-246,000 in total (the same range as the Bethe, Bohr, Einstein and Rotblat profiles; later cancer deaths excluded). Scope is direct because his own wartime work went into the weapon. Share 0.005: Feynman was a junior physicist who became one of several group leaders in the Theoretical Division that Bethe headed (Bethe's share: 0.02). He worked on the yield formula and helped run the punched-card implosion calculations behind the Nagasaki bomb, cutting each from about three months to under three weeks. That is more hands-on bomb work than Rabi's (0.002) or Rotblat's (0.001), but less decisive than Segrè's (0.01). Thousands of others built the bombs, and US leaders chose to use them. Result: about 750-1,230 deaths credited.^{[7],[8],[9],[20],[21]}

  Sources: Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF); Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Security Research Center; Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History; Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History; Wikipedia

• Major

  Calculations for the atomic bomb

  As a group leader in the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos, Feynman worked with Bethe on a formula for a fission bomb's explosive yield and helped run the punched-card calculations used to evaluate the implosion design of the Nagasaki bomb. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings killed an estimated 150,000 to 246,000 people within two to four months. He later regretted not reconsidering his role after Germany's defeat.^{[7],[8],[9],[20],[21],[22]}

• Moderate

  Treatment of women

  In his best-selling 1985 memoir Feynman described deceiving women to sleep with them and holding meetings in strip clubs. Protesters objected to sexist stories in his lectures in 1968 and 1972. In 1956 his second wife, Mary Louise Bell, obtained a divorce decree on grounds of 'extreme cruelty'; she had described his violent temper. He did back Jenijoy La Belle, Caltech's first female professor, in a discrimination complaint that the EEOC upheld in 1977.^[21],[22]

• 1935

  Quota

  Columbia University turned him down after he sat its entrance exam, at a time when elite American universities limited the number of Jews they admitted. His biographers link the rejection to those limits. He went to MIT instead.^{[5],[19],[21]}

• 1939

  Discrimination

  Princeton's physics chair, Henry Smyth, wrote to MIT asking whether Feynman was Jewish, saying the department kept its proportion of Jews small because they were hard to place in jobs. He was admitted after further letters from John Slater.^[5],[21]

• 1945

  Other

  He married Arline Greenbaum in 1942 knowing she had tuberculosis, over his family's objections. She died in 1945, shortly before the first atomic test, while he was working at Los Alamos.^[5],[7]

Both parents came from Jewish families. His father, Melville, was born in Minsk and came to the United States at five; his mother, Lucille Phillips, was born in the US to a Jewish family of Polish immigrants. At almost 13 he quit Sunday school just before confirmation, partly over religious doubts, and in his youth he called himself an atheist. In 1967 he asked not to be included in a book on Jewish Nobel winners, writing that crediting talents to a supposed Jewish heredity was dangerous, since such theories had been used by Hitler. In 1968 his office declined a second request.^{[5],[18],[21],[22]}

1. May 11, 1918

   Born in Queens, New York City, to Melville Feynman, a Jewish immigrant from Minsk, and Lucille Phillips, from a Jewish family of Polish immigrants.^{[1],[5],[6],[22]}

2. 1939

   Graduates from MIT and is admitted to graduate school at Princeton, whose physics chair had first asked MIT whether he was Jewish.^[2],[5],[21]

3. 1942

   Earns his PhD at Princeton under John Wheeler and marries Arline Greenbaum, who is ill with tuberculosis.^[2],[5],[6]

4. 1943

   Moves to Los Alamos, where he becomes a group leader in Hans Bethe's Theoretical Division of the atomic bomb project.^{[5],[7],[8],[22]}

5. 1945

   Arline dies of tuberculosis; soon afterward he watches the Trinity test, the first atomic explosion.^[5],[7],[8]

6. 1945

   Joins Cornell University as an associate professor of theoretical physics, alongside Hans Bethe, who had recommended him.^{[2],[8],[21],[22]}

7. 1948

   Unveils his diagrams at the Pocono conference; his key QED papers appear in the Physical Review in 1949.^[1],[10]

8. 1950

   Joins the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), his academic home for the rest of his life.^[2],[6]

9. December 29, 1959

   Gives the talk 'There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom' at Caltech, inviting scientists to work at the scale of atoms.^[15]

10. 1961

    Begins the introductory physics course at Caltech that becomes The Feynman Lectures on Physics.^[6],[13]

11. 1965

    Shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics.^[1],[3]

12. May 1981

    Proposes quantum computers in a conference talk, 'Simulating physics with computers', later published as a paper.^[12]

13. 1986

    Serves on the presidential commission on the Challenger disaster; his O-ring test and report appendix expose NASA's safety failures.^{[6],[16],[17],[22]}

14. February 15, 1988

    Dies in Los Angeles at 69, after years of fighting abdominal cancer.^[1],[5]

1. 1.Richard P. Feynman - Facts · NobelPrize.org (Nobel Prize Outreach)
2. 2.Richard P. Feynman - Biographical · NobelPrize.org (from Nobel Lectures, Physics 1963-1970, Elsevier, 1972), 1972
3. 3.The Nobel Prize in Physics 1965 - Award ceremony speech by Ivar Waller · NobelPrize.org, 1965
4. 4.Richard P. Feynman - Nobel Lecture: The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics (11 December 1965) · NobelPrize.org, 1965
5. 5.Richard Feynman (1918-1988), by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson · MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews
6. 6.Richard Phillips Feynman papers, 1933-1988 (collection guide, biographical note) · Caltech Archives, via Online Archive of California
7. 7.Richard P. Feynman (The Vault) · Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Security Research Center, 2023
8. 8.Richard Feynman · Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
9. 9.The Human Computers of Los Alamos · Atomic Heritage Foundation, National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
10. 10.Physics and Feynman's Diagrams, by David Kaiser (American Scientist 93: 156-165) · American Scientist (Sigma Xi), author copy hosted by MIT, 2005
11. 11.Measurement of the Electron Magnetic Moment, by X. Fan, T. G. Myers, B. A. D. Sukra and G. Gabrielse (Physical Review Letters 130, 071801) · arXiv (Cornell University), 2023
12. 12.Quantum computing 40 years later, by John Preskill · arXiv (Cornell University), 2021
13. 13.The Feynman Lectures on Physics: Preface to the New Millennium Edition, by Kip Thorne · California Institute of Technology (The Feynman Lectures Website)
14. 14.The Feynman Lectures on Physics (free online edition) · California Institute of Technology (The Feynman Lectures Website)
15. 15.There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, by Richard P. Feynman (transcript of a talk at the American Physical Society meeting at Caltech, 29 December 1959) · California Institute of Technology, Engineering and Science magazine, 1960
16. 16.Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, Volume 2, Appendix F: Personal Observations on Reliability of Shuttle, by R. P. Feynman · NASA History Office, 1986
17. 17.How Richard Feynman Found the Root of the Challenger Disaster, by Molly Glick · Nautilus, 2026
18. 18.Richard Feynman: Typed Letters Signed, correspondence with Tina Levitan on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, 1967-1968 (dealer description quoting the letters, also published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track) · Manhattan Rare Book Company
19. 19.Getting In: The social logic of Ivy League admissions, by Malcolm Gladwell (review of Jerome Karabel, The Chosen) · The New Yorker, 2005
20. 20.Frequently Asked Questions: How many people died as a result of the atomic bombings? · Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF)
21. 21.Richard Feynman · Wikipedia
22. 22.Richard Feynman, by James Gleick · Encyclopaedia Britannica