Richard Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 for his contributions to quantum electrodynamics, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin'ichirō Tomonaga. He developed the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, and studied superfluidity in supercooled liquid helium. During World War II he assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, and in the 1980s he was a member of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He was a pioneer in the field of quantum computing, and introduced the concept of nanotechnology. Through his lectures and books, including the semi-autobiographical Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?, he was an avid popularizer of physics. In a 1999 poll of leading physicists, he was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1792:
Merchant sea captain Robert Gray became the first recorded European to navigate the Columbia River in what is now the Pacific Northwest United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gray%27s_Columbia_River_expedition
1813:
William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth departed westward from Sydney on an expedition to become the first Europeans confirmed to cross the Blue Mountains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1813_crossing_of_the_Blue_Mountains
1910:
Glacier National Park, located in the U.S. state of Montana, was designated a national park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_National_Park_(U.S.)
1998:
India began conducting the Pokhran-II nuclear weapons test, its first since the Smiling Buddha test 24 years earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II
2010:
David Cameron took office as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed the country's first coalition government since the Second World War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
Feynman diagram: (physics) A pictorial representation of the interactions of subatomic particles, showing their paths in space and time as lines, and their interactions as points where lines meet. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Feynman_diagram
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
As we are — the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are. To bring about order and peace, we must begin with ourselves and not with society, not with the State, for the world is ourselves … If we would bring about a sane and happy society we must begin with ourselves and not with another, not outside of ourselves, but with ourselves. --Jiddu Krishnamurti https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti