Feynman, Richard (1918-1988)

American physicist

Richard Feynman's career spanned some of the greatest discoveries of twentieth century physics , from developing the atomic bomb and studying quantum electrodynamics (QED ) to solving the riddle of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

Feynman received the 1965 Nobel Prize for his work regarding the interaction of light and matter, which he shared with Shin'ichio Tomonaga and Julian Schwinger. Other honors he received include the Albert Einstein Award (1954), the Niels Bohr International Gold Medal (1973) and membership in the National Academy of Sciences (1954).

Richard Phillips Feynman was born in Queens, New York. His parents were Lucille Phillips and Melville Feynman, a clothing salesman originally from Minsk. Feynman was interested in science from an early age, when he tinkered with crystal radio sets. His father had predicted that his first child, if a boy, would be a scientist; Mr. Feynman got more than he bargained for, for Richard's younger sister Joan also became a physicist

Feynman attended New York public schools, and after high school graduation went on to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1939, he went on to do his doctoral work at Princeton, where he served as a research assistant to John A. Wheeler, a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist. As a graduate student under Wheeler, he concerned himself with the knotty problem of how electrons interact, a question that would occupy him for years.

During the 1920s, Paul Dirac had introduced the theory that described the behavior of electrons in such a way that satisfied both quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. However, many problems arose with Dirac's equation when the known principles governing electromagnetic interactions were brought to bear on it; then Dirac's equation involved dividing by zero, which resulted in infinite answers, which were for all practical purposes useless.

Feynman—who from his undergraduate days had a well-deserved reputation for finding better ways to complete calculations—found a way to circumvent these useless answers. By "renormalizing" or redefining, the existing value of the electron's mass and charge, he was able to make irrelevant the parts of Dirac's theory that led to the troublesome answers.

But Feynman's work did more than just clean up some messy mathematics. It also provided physicists a new way to work with electrons. It opened the way for a new examination and description of the hydrogen atom . It gave scientists a look at what really happens when electrons, anti-electrons (or positrons) and photons (light particles) collide.

After receiving his doctorate, Feynman and his wife, Arlene Greenbaum, moved to Los Alamos, N.M., where he went to work with the Manhattan Project. There he worked, and held his intellectual own, with noted scientists such as Enrico Fermi and Hans Bethe, who headed Feynman's division. Feynman's wife Arlene, who had been his high-school sweetheart, died in 1945 after battling lymphatic tuberculosis. Less than a month after Arlene's death, Feynman became one of the first people in the world to witness the explosion of an atomic bomb.

After World War II, Bethe offered Feynman a position at Cornell University. While teaching physics, he also studied the question of the interaction of light and matter. In his description of the problem, he discarded the effect of the electromagnetic field and concentrated on the interactions of the particles themselves, as ruled by least action. In 1945, he also created a visual way to keep track of the interactions of the particles within time and space . Read from the bottom up (which indicates the passage of time), the diagrams show incoming particles (electrons) as straight lines. Their interactions (when they meet) are illustrated with wavy lines, indicating photons, which transmit the interactions. The straight lines then resume, indicating the departing particles after the interaction. Known as Feynman diagrams, they are still in use by theoretical physicists in such diverse areas as acoustooptics, QED, and studies of electroweak interactions.

Feynman left Cornell in 1950 to join the California Institute of Technology, or CalTech, with which he would be affiliated for the rest of his life. During his time at CalTech he turned his prodigious mind and imagination to a staggering variety of problems, including the superfluidity of helium, superconductivity, and quark theory.

He married again in 1952, to Mary Louise Bell; they divorced four years later. In 1960, he married again, for the last time, to Gweneth Howarth; the couple had two children.

In 1979, Feynman was diagnosed with cancer, which he would battle for the next decade, before his death at age 69. During his last decade, Feynman became one of the world's most popular scientists, with the publication of two autobiographies, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character (1984) and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" Further Adventures of a Curious Character (1988). He also published QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter in 1985. During the 1960s, he published Quantum Electrodynamics (1961), The Character of Physical Law (1965), and The Feynman Lectures, three volumes of transcribed physics lectures he gave at CalTech that beautifully explain everything from the fall of water to QED.

Feynman was part of the group that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. Feynman memorably demonstrated the failure of the shuttle's O-ring gaskets by placing a piece of gasket in a clamp and dropping it into ice water. The material became brittle, and the simple demonstration showed that the gaskets' failure had caused the explosion.

See also Bohr Model; Electromagnetic spectrum; Quantum theory and mechanics

http://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/feynman-richard-1918-1988

とても興味深く読みました：

再生核研究所声明353（2017.2.2）　ゼロ除算　記念日

2014.2.2　に 一般の方から100/0　の意味を問われていた頃、偶然に執筆中の論文原稿にそれがゼロとなっているのを発見した。直ぐに結果に驚いて友人にメールしたり、同僚に話した。それ以来、ちょうど３年、相当詳しい記録と経過が記録されている。重要なものは再生核研究所声明として英文と和文で公表されている。最初のものは

再生核研究所声明　148（2014.2.12）:　100/0=0,  0/0=0　－　割り算の考えを自然に拡張すると　―　神の意志

で、最新のは

Announcement 352 (2017.2.2):  On the third birthday of the division by zero z/0=0　

である。

アリストテレス、ブラーマグプタ、ニュートン、オイラー、アインシュタインなどが深く関与する　ゼロ除算の神秘的な永い歴史上の発見であるから、その日をゼロ除算記念日として定めて、世界史を進化させる決意の日としたい。ゼロ除算は、ユークリッド幾何学の変更といわゆるリーマン球面の無限遠点の考え方の変更を求めている。―　実際、ゼロ除算の歴史は人類の闘争の歴史と共に　人類の愚かさの象徴であるとしている。

心すべき要点を纏めて置きたい。

１）     ゼロの明確な発見と算術の確立者Brahmagupta (598 - 668 ?)　は　既にそこで、0/0=0　と定義していたにも関わらず、言わば創業者の深い考察を理解できず、それは間違いであるとして、１３００年以上も間違いを繰り返してきた。

２）     予断と偏見、慣習、習慣、思い込み、権威に盲従する人間の精神の弱さ、愚かさを自戒したい。我々は何時もそのように囚われていて、虚像を見ていると　真智を愛する心を大事にして行きたい。絶えず、それは真かと　問うていかなければならない。

３）     ピタゴラス派では　無理数の発見をしていたが、なんと、無理数の存在は自分たちの世界観に合わないからという理由で、―　その発見は都合が悪いので　―　、弟子を処刑にしてしまったという。真智への愛より、面子、権力争い、勢力争い、利害が大事という人間の浅ましさの典型的な例である。

４）     この辺は、２０００年以上も前に、既に世の聖人、賢人が諭されてきたのに　いまだ人間は生物の本能レベルを越えておらず、愚かな世界史を続けている。人間が人間として生きる意義は　真智への愛にある　と言える。

５）     いわば創業者の偉大な精神が正確に、上手く伝えられず、ピタゴラス派のような対応をとっているのは、本末転倒で、そのようなことが世に溢れていると警戒していきたい。本来あるべきものが逆になっていて、社会をおかしくしている。

６）     ゼロ除算の発見記念日に　繰り返し、人類の愚かさを反省して、明るい世界史を切り拓いて行きたい。

以　上

追記：

The division by zero is uniquely and reasonably determined as 1/0=0/0=z/0=0 in the natural extensions of fractions. We have to change our basic ideas for our space and world:

Division by Zero z/0 = 0 in Euclidean Spaces

Hiroshi Michiwaki, Hiroshi Okumura and Saburou Saitoh

International Journal of Mathematics and Computation Vol. 28(2017); Issue  1, 2017), 1-16.　

http://www.scirp.org/journal/alamt　 　http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/alamt.2016.62007
http://www.ijapm.org/show-63-504-1.html
http://www.diogenes.bg/ijam/contents/2014-27-2/9/9.pdf