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Physics

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The letters of Richard P. Feynman

By Marcus Chown

22 March 2005

“ENCLOSED find a $25 draft sent to me by some nut wanting to throw money away. Buy your wife some flowers,” Richard Feynman wrote to a potential publisher. He was many things – a genius, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, a raconteur. Most of all, however, he was a man who had a lot of fun. And this is vividly conveyed by this collection of letters, compiled and edited by his adopted daughter, Michelle.

An irregular correspondent, Feynman nevertheless found time to reply to countless letters from physicists, fans, schoolchildren and even people calling him a “complete jerk”. More often than not,…

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