Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

by James Gleick

In preparing for his oral qualifying examination, a rite of passage for every graduate student, he chose not to study the outlines of known physics. Instead he went up to MIT, where he could be alone, and opened a fresh notebook. On the title page he wrote: Notebook Of Things I Don’t Know About. For the first but not the last time he reorganized his knowledge. He worked for weeks at disassembling each branch of physics, oiling the parts, and putting them back together, looking all the while for the raw edges and inconsistencies. He tried to find the essential kernels of each subject. When he was done he had a notebook of which he was especially proud.

the history of science is a history not of individual discovery but of multiple, overlapping, coincidental discovery.

“For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”