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>
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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>
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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>
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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>
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