Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

While Feynman is working on the atomic bomb in New Mexico, his wife becomes ill and must be hospitalized. Feynman recently read an article about bloodhounds’ excellent sense of smell, and to pass the time while visiting his wife, he decides to experiment with whether people also have a better sense of smell than most assume. The experiment shows that he can, indeed, tell which objects his wife has recently touched, though the human sense of smell is not nearly as acute as dogs’. Having discovered this, Feynman turns his sniffing game into a party trick in which he first appears to be a “faker” but proves the truth of his point by scientific experiment.

A friend tells Feynman that he is working on a project to refine uranium to be used as fuel for an atomic bomb, and he wants Feynman to help. Feynman declines but immediately starts working on the problem. Feynman attends a meeting about uranium separation. There he meets a half dozen of the developers of the atomic bomb, three of whom are Nobel Prize winners. What impresses Feynman the most about the meeting is that although there is scientific disagreement among the committee members, every member listens carefully, and they come to a decision without wasting time or energy. Feynman’s group is not chosen to lead the process of separating uranium, but they are sent to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the work on building the atomic bomb has begun.

Once he is on the so-called Manhattan Project, Feynman visits scientists in Chicago to learn about their work. Though he feels he will not be of much help, Feynman can make suggestions that help them solve their problems; he attributes his contribution to his tendency toward idiosyncratic thinking. In buying his train ticket to New Mexico, the government asks Feynman to purchase his ticket elsewhere than Princeton, to help avert suspicion about why so many Princeton scientists are headed to Albuquerque. Feynman reasons that if everyone is buying a ticket from someplace else, there is no reason for him to try to deceive the stationmaster, so he buys his ticket in Princeton. The man selling the ticket is suspicious because he had been sending crates full of equipment to New Mexico, but nobody was buying tickets. Once Feynman buys his ticket, the suspicions are allayed because it makes sense to the man that this is all Feynman’s equipment.

Arriving at Los Alamos, Feynman starts work right away. At first, his most significant job is to argue theory with “big shot” physicist Hans Bethe (who will eventually win the Nobel Prize). Because he dares to argue with, rather than submit to, such a venerated figure, Feynman helps Bethe work out his problem, and Feynman receives a promotion. What concerns Feynman even more, however, is the living accommodations. The scientists are supposed to share dormitory rooms with bunkbeds, two scientists to a room. Feynman wants a room for himself, and on his first night in Los Alamos, nobody comes to share a room with him. His strategy to keep his own room involves taking some of his wife’s clothes and laying them around the room so it looks as if two people are occupying the space. The ruse works, but it also causes a scandal and causes the Army to make a rule about “NO WOMEN IN THE MEN’S DORMITORY!” (132), a rule that Feynman never actually violates.

Another rule that Feynman finds himself potentially violating is censorship. Because the Manhattan Project is top secret, the government monitors correspondence that goes in and out of Los Alamos. Feynman often plays a game with his father and wife in which they write to him in code and see if he can decipher it. Writing in code is forbidden at a top-secret installation, and the Army wants the key to the code, but Feynman does not have it, so they insist that the family send the key along with the letters so the government can read them before giving them to Feynman. However, even this arrangement proves confusing to the Army, which begins to censor shopping lists that Feynman receives from his wife because they think the lists are coded messages. Feynman is both amused and frustrated by Army rules that make little sense to him. In contrast, he is simply amused by scientific intellects such as Edward Teller (the developer of the hydrogen bomb), who know when Feynman has been up to things potentially more nefarious, such as lock picking, but who are not upset by it because they understand Feynman’s intentions are not malicious.

After arriving at Los Alamos, Feynman is sent on another field trip to visit scientists working on the Manhattan Project, this time at Oak Ridge laboratory in Tennessee. His charge is to make sure that the bomb materials are stored in such a way that they do not accidentally explode. He is supposed to enforce the rules but not say why the rules exist; however, Feynman believes that “it is impossible for [people] to obey a bunch of rules unless they understand how [the atom bomb] works” (143), and he successfully convinces the military to follow his logic. Later on the same trip, engineers at Oak Ridge, believing Feynman to be “a genius” (144), show him blueprints that make no sense to him. Rather than admitting he does not understand what he sees, Feynman guesses what they mean, and he turns out to be correct, further cementing his reputation as a genius.

Back at Los Alamos, Feynman must use mechanical computers and adding machines to make difficult mathematical calculations. Two problems arise: the calculations are so difficult that they can physically break the machines and the computers are “so wonderful” that one tends to “play with them” (148). The Army sent Feynman a group of talented recruits with engineering skills, and he needs to put them to work solving the computer problems. This proves difficult because secrecy rules forbid the recruits to know what they are working on. Feynman gets the secrecy rules adjusted so that his team does not have to work blindly, and the project proceeds with great efficiency and accuracy. While he is working on this project, Feynman’s wife Arlene dies from tuberculosis. He cannot process his grief at this time and does not cry about her death until much later. Instead, he focuses on the calculation project and is impressed with how his team solves problems, even in his absence.

The Manhattan Project introduced Feynman to most of the great physicists of his time. He writes, “I was an underling at the beginning. Later I became a group leader. And I met some very great men. It is one of the greatest experiences of my life to have met all these wonderful physicists” (153). He meets Enrico Fermi who can tell Feynman the results of a project Feynman is working on simply by thinking through its parameters. He credits John von Neumann with teaching him: “You don’t have to be responsible for the world that you’re in” (154). He argues with Niels Bohr and gains a reputation for a strong intellect because he refuses to agree with everything that a Nobel Prize winner says. He also witnesses the first atomic bomb explosion firsthand, claiming to be “about the only guy who actually looked at the damn thing” with his naked eyes (156). After the Manhattan Project, Feynman develops pessimism about a world in which such a dangerous and powerful weapon exists. However, he finds comfort in the fact that others are more optimistic that life can go on as before.

Feynman explains that he learned to pick tumbler locks from Leo Lavatelli, another physicist on the Manhattan Project. Because there are so many secrets on the project, there are many locks to keep filed information safe, which provides Feynman opportunities to practice his new lockpicking and safecracking pastime. Feynman feels locks are a symbol of false security and feels compelled to “demonstrate that the locks meant nothing” (160). He treats locks as a puzzle and by logic and experimentation develops ways to open virtually all the locks at Los Alamos. Occasionally, he gets lucky when figuring out the combination of a particularly difficult lock, but he never lets on and allows his reputation as a safecracker to grow. On a trip to Oak Ridge, he explains to a high-level Army officer that the safes and locks at the facility are dangerously insecure and demonstrates it by cracking his safe. The colonel takes the wrong lesson from Feynman’s demonstration. Instead of ordering his staff to make sure that their file drawers are not left open, which makes the locks more vulnerable to picking, he orders them to change all the combinations, which does not affect how easily they can be cracked. After gaining a reputation as a safecracker, Feynman meets the locksmith at Los Alamos, whose legitimate job is to open locks and safes. Feynman teaches him how to repair mechanical calculators, and in exchange, the locksmith, who has heard about Feynman’s reputation, explains that he can open even more locks at the facility simply by trying the factory combinations, which 20% of users never bother to change.

After World War II, Feynman gets drafted. Not wanting to join the Army, he devises a plan. Because he had “decided that all psychiatrists are fakers” (181), he carefully phrases his responses to the Army’s psychological tests to appear psychologically “deficient” and unfit for duty (185). He shares the anecdote with co-workers, and they are quite amused, except for one man who turns out to be a psychiatrist. Worrying that the psychiatrist might reveal his ploy to the Army, Feynman cements his draft deferment by writing to the Army saying that he feels they are wrong about him being psychologically unfit for service. He writes, “I am calling your attention to your error because I am insane enough not to wish to take advantage of it” (188). This ruse gets him out of the Army once and for all.