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

While teaching at Cornell, Feynman makes weekly trips to Buffalo to lecture on physics. Feynman claims to be naïve about “the rest of the world” and takes a recommendation from a cab driver for a bar to visit after his lectures. He spends time meeting women in the bar but worries he is drinking too much. One week he decides not to order alcohol and gains a bigger reputation because people assume he’s an alcoholic who has the strength to go to a bar and not drink. This ruse does not, however, prevent him from getting into a bar fight. Feynman feels the need to be a “real man” and not back down from his intimidators (205). He goes back to Cornell with a black eye where he uses the injury to burnish his eccentric reputation.

While visiting his parents, Feynman gets a phone call from an aircraft manufacturer asking if he would like to be the director of their laboratory. Feynman is confused by their offer but learns that his name is on a patent for a nuclear-powered rocket. He was never serious about such an idea, but the Army asked for, and filed patents for, virtually every idea the scientists at Los Alamos had. In exchange for the patents, the government is supposed to pay the scientists one dollar per idea, and Feynman demands his dollar. He pranks the Army by having the rest of the scientists do the same, forcing them to pay off small sums they never intended to settle.

Feynman returns to New Mexico to pursue a romantic interest he met while working there. When that relationship does not work out, Feynman, who has “nothing to do” (212), spends time frequenting a nightclub where he meets many other women. He frequently buys drinks for them and gains a “reputation of being some kind of eccentric who always comes in not dressed up, not with a neat suit, but always ready to spend lots of money on the girls” (215). Noticing that neither he nor any of the other big spenders at the club are having sex with the women they spend money on, Feynman turns to one of the club performers for advice on how to “get something from a girl” (215). That guidance consists of being stingy and disrespectful toward women until he is certain that they will have sex with him. Though Feynman finds this counterintuitive, he does have some success with it. When he returns to Cornell, he tries the same advice with an “ordinary girl” instead of the women who habituate nightclubs and asks directly if she will sleep with him before he even buys her a drink. She agrees. Feynman claims he “never used [that tactic] after that,” but it was a life lesson that showed him the world was different than he believed.

Feynman recalls a time when, as a student at Princeton, he was discussing math problems with his colleagues. He claims that it is “easy” to calculate a certain difficult solution, and his listeners counter that “he’s just faking” his mathematical ability (221). The group then begins testing him, and Feynman gives accurate answers by estimation, a basic math skill that the advanced mathematicians seem to have forgotten. While they are attempting to figure out how he got the correct answer, Feynman thinks a bit more and adds even more digits to his very good estimates. They never figure out how he does the mental math, though Feynman admits that occasionally it is “sheer luck” that they ask him a question that is relatively simple to compute. For Feynman, it’s a puzzle game, and he says he has “lots of fun trying to do arithmetic fast, by tricks” (223). In contrast, when a mathematician later challenges him to a puzzle that involves a verbal twist, Feynman cannot figure that out. Feynman says, “He was always deflating me like that. He was a very smart fellow” (225). Later Feynman does math challenges with an expert at working an abacus. The abacus man computes numbers more quickly than Feynman can mentally until they begin more difficult math, at which point Feynman consistently comes out ahead. Feynman explains that he can beat the abacus man at this level because: he uses a method of estimation to work the problem; the man does not “know numbers” but only knows how to manipulate the abacus; and he was given a number that was easy to estimate quickly.

While teaching at Cornell, Feynman spends a summer working at the Center for Physical Research in Brazil. His time in Brazil opens his eyes to priorities that are, he says, “different from the way it is where I come from” (231). Not realizing that the international language of science is English, Feynman gives his lectures in Portuguese, which breaks the social norm of the scientific community but endears him to his hosts. Meanwhile, he becomes enamored with Brazilian culture, including samba music, and takes up playing the frigideira, a percussing instrument that looks like a small frying pan. He becomes proficient enough that he joins a group that performs in public. He says that he takes joy in doing “that human stuff” (238). Feynman ends up making several trips to Brazil to work on physics, but he finds more pleasure in experiencing the culture than doing the science.

His greatest critique of Brazil is its educational system. His students tend to be quite intelligent, but he worries that although they “had memorized everything […] they didn’t know what anything meant” (241). He encourages his students to solve problems by trial and error and to ask him questions, but he finds that these are not parts of the educational culture in Brazil. The students who are most attuned to his methods of learning—the ones who do not “fake that they know” (245)—are either educated abroad or largely self-taught. Feynman gives a potentially undiplomatic lecture to Brazilians that is critical of their teaching/learning methods, but his audience is largely receptive, even if the American State Department is not. 

While teaching at Caltech, a colleague wants to mock Feynman for learning Portuguese, so he has a party guest greet Feynman in Mandarin Chinese to test his reaction. Feynman replies in a fake language, and the guest assumes he is speaking Cantonese.

On a cross-country road trip, Feynman stops in Las Vegas. He becomes friendly with a con man who makes a living by promising to teach people how to gamble “successfully” but whose hustle is just a math trick that makes money flow in his direction. Feynman finds this “very entertaining” (253). Feynman also spends time flirting with showgirls and practicing the “rules” for women that he learned in New Mexico. One woman claims to be the wife of a celebrity Feynman calls “John Big” (256). Feynman takes pleasure in palling around with Mr. Big, pretending to be a “BIG OPERATOR” rather than “a small-time professor” (259). He also meets a professional gambler and asks him how he makes a living when they both know the odds are always in favor of the casino. Feynman learns that the professional bets against amateur gamblers who play their “superstitious ideas about lucky numbers” (262).

Cornell is beginning to bore Feynman. The academic departments are “low-level baloney”; Ithaca is “a small town”; and “the weather wasn’t really very good” (264). He finds himself attracted to the California Institute of Technology near Los Angeles which is closer to “the kind of stuff” that attracted him: “pretty girls, big operators, and so on” (265). In 1951, Feynman accepts a job at Caltech which has “people who are close to the top, who are very interested in what they are doing, and who [he] can talk to” (266). He remains there for the rest of his career. Though he considers going back to Cornell, he realizes that he prefers Caltech because it is where one can make a “fundamental discovery” in science and where people from “all different fields of science would tell [him] stuff” (262). Though he receives lucrative offers to leave Caltech, he decides “never to decide again” and stays in Pasadena (268). It’s the place where he is “able to do physics well” (269).