Ralph Leighton Libri

A New York Times bestseller—the outrageous exploits of one of this century's greatest scientific minds and a legendary American original. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.

Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and a winner of the Nobel Prize died in February 1988. This is his last anecdotal biography in which he tells the story of the two people who most influenced his early years - his father who taught him to think and his first wife Arlene who taught him to love, even as she lay dying at an Albuquerque hospital while Feynman worked nearby on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. There are also lighter moments which tell of his travels in Geneva, Trinidad, Greece and Japan.

"So you think you know every country in the world", world-renowned physicist and prankster Richard Feynman said to his sidekick, geography enthusiast Ralph Leighton. "Okay . . . what ever happened to Tanna Tuva?" And so began their decade-long quest to reach the mysterious country, struggling with the NASA bureaucracy and bouts of cancer in an entertaining saga of two zany strategists. Photographs.