Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, but this book is not a scientific memoir so much as a self-portrait of a restless mind at play. Edited from tape-recorded conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton, the chapters move through his childhood in Far Rockaway, his years on the Manhattan Project, his teaching at Cornell and Caltech, and his forays into samba drumming, sketching, and Mayan hieroglyphs. Feynman treats every subject as a puzzle, from cracking the safes that held atomic secrets to figuring out how ants find sugar in a kitchen. The book is famous for its irreverent voice and its insistence that curiosity, honesty, and a refusal to be impressed by authority are the real engines of scientific work. It has become a touchstone for readers who want to see how a first-class scientific temperament actually thinks about the world.
What you might want to know about Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
The Nobel laureate physicist tells stories from his life, from cracking safes at Los Alamos to painting nudes and picking locks, in his own conversational voice.
Attia has cited Feynman as a model of first-principles thinking and intellectual honesty, and points to this book as the clearest window into how a great mind stays curious and refuses to accept received wisdom.
No. It is a memoir of stories rather than science, though Feynman's approach to problems is the through-line and readers looking for actual physics should turn to The Feynman Lectures or Six Easy Pieces.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! was written by Richard P. Feynman, published in 1985 by W. W. Norton & Company.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is 350 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
