Chapter 22 The fourth big professor-1

I don't believe I can get by without teaching.The reason is that even when I can't think of anything, I can still say to myself: "At least I'm still alive, at least I'm still doing something, making some contribution"—this is a psychological effect. During my stay at Princeton in the 1940s, I saw firsthand what happened to the brilliant minds at the Institute for Advanced Study.They were all endowed with brilliant minds, and were therefore specially chosen to come and sit about at their leisure all day in a pretty house by the woods--without teaching, without any restraint or encumbrance.But after a while, they can't think of anything new, and everyone must start to feel guilty or frustrated, and more worried about not being able to come up with new ideas.But everything is still the same, still no inspiration.

This happens simply because there is a lack of real activity and challenge: they don't have access to the academics doing the experiments, they don't have to figure out how to answer the students' questions, nothing! In any thought process, when things are going well and ideas are flowing, teaching is a real hindrance, a nuisance.But there are more times when the mind is empty. If you can't think of anything and don't do anything, it will really drive people crazy!You can't even say, "I'm teaching!" Also, while in class, you can think about basic things that are already clear.This knowledge is very interesting and enjoyable, so why not revisit it?On the other hand, is there a better way to introduce it?Are there any new related questions?Can you give new life to this old knowledge?The basic things are not difficult to think about; and if you don't come up with anything new, that's okay, what you thought about before is enough for the lecture.But if you do come up with some new ideas, seeing things from a new angle, it's a pleasure.

Students ask questions that can sometimes provide new research directions.They often raise some far-reaching questions that I have thought about but temporarily abandoned, but it is also very interesting to rethink these questions and see if I can make a breakthrough.Students may not understand the direction I want to answer, or the level I want to think about; but when they ask me this question, they often remind me of related problems.It is not easy to obtain this kind of revelation by yourself alone. So for me, teaching and students keep my life going bright and bright, and I will never accept anyone to arrange everything for me - happy people don't need to teach.will never!

But once I got such an invitation. During World War II, while I was in Los Alamos, Bate got me a job at Cornell University for $3,700 a year.There were other organizations that offered higher salaries at the time, but because I liked Bate, I decided to go to Cornell regardless of money.Bate cared about me very much. When he found out that someone else offered a higher salary, he took the initiative to talk to Cornell and raised my annual salary to $4,000.I hadn't started working yet! Cornell informed me that what I want to teach is mathematics and physics; at the same time, it told me that I should arrive at the school on November 6th - indeed, I can't remember the date clearly. It seems a bit strange that the date is set at the end of the year. On the train to Ithaca, I spent most of my time writing reports on the Manhattan Project.I still remember planning my lectures after the train arrived in Buffalo, New York.

You have to understand the pressure at Los Alamos: Everyone is working as fast as they can, working hard, desperately, and everything is always at the last minute.Therefore, it has become a natural thing for me to start preparing for the course on the train a day or two before the lecture. For me, teaching mathematical physics is ideal.Applying mathematics to physics was at the heart of my work during the war.I have a good idea of ​​which methods are really useful.Which are useless.After working so hard and spending 4 years applying math skills, I'm really seasoned.I've listed each math item and how it's dealt with.To this day, I still have the notes I made on the train.

When I arrived at Isaka, I got off the train and carried my heavy suitcase on my shoulders as usual.A guy yelled, "Taxi, sir?" It never occurred to me to take a taxi, I was young, I had no money, and I liked to do my own thing.But I thought again: "I'm a professor now, and I must have some dignity." So I put down my luggage and held it in my hand, and said, "Okay." "Where are you going?" "hostel." "Which hotel?" "Any hotel." "Do you have a reservation?" "No." "It's hard to find a room now."

"We'll look for them one by one. You wait for me at the door of the hotel." I tried "Qisejia Hotel" and there was no room available.We ran to the "Outsider's Hotel", still nothing.I told the driver, "It's impossible to drive around the city like this. It would cost too much money. I'll walk." I left my luggage at the Outer Hotel and wandered around looking for a room. I bumped into another guy wandering around looking for a room.It turns out that the surrounding hotels are really hopeless.It didn't take long for us to stroll to a certain hillside, and slowly found that we had walked near the university campus.

We saw a house that looked like a dormitory, with the windows open and some bunk beds inside.It was already night, so we went in and asked if we could sleep there, and he said, "Come on, just sleep here!" I don't think that's good, it's like stealing.If they come back and find us sleeping in their beds, they'll be in trouble.So we left the house and walked on for a while, and saw a huge pile of fallen leaves under the street lamp. It was late autumn, and the leaves must have been swept here from the lawn.I say: "Hey! We can lie on the pile of leaves and sleep!" I tried it, and it felt soft.I'm tired of wandering around like that, sleeping on fallen leaves is perfect!But I was afraid I might get in trouble for it.Back in Los Alamos everybody made fun of me - I played the drums and what - said Cornell didn't know what kind of professor they had, and said I was going to do something stupid and get famous ; so I got serious, and finally reluctantly gave up the idea of ​​sleeping on that pile of leaves.

We wandered around a bit more and saw a large, important-looking building.Walking inside, I found two sofas in the corridor.The person walking with me said: "I want to sleep here!" and fell down on the sofa. I really didn't want to cause trouble, so I finally found a cleaner in the basement and asked him if he could sleep on the sofa at all.He said, "Of course." The next morning, after breakfast, I hurried to find out when classes would start.I ran into the physics department office and asked, "When do classes start? Am I missing class?" The person inside said: "You don't have to worry about anything, the class will start in 8 days."

I was shocked!Then my first sentence was: "Then why did you ask me to come here a week ago?" "I thought you'd like to come earlier to familiarize yourself with the environment, find a place to settle down and wait for school to start." I'm back in civilization from Los Alamos, and I have no idea what's going on! Professor Gibbs asked me to go to the student center to solve the housing problem.It was a big place, and many students walked around there.I walked up to a big table with a "Accommodation" sign and said, "I just got here and I'm looking for a place to live."

The guy said, "My friend, it's hard to find a house in Isega. In fact, believe it or not, there was a professor who had to sleep on the couch here last night!" I looked around and it was the same place!I turned around and said, "I'm the professor, and the professor doesn't want to do it all over again." The first few years at Cornell were fun, sometimes comical.A few days after arriving at the school, Professor Gibbs came to my office and told me that we usually do not accept new students at the end of the semester, but if the applicant is very, very good, we will accept him.He then handed me an application to evaluate. When he came back, he asked, "How was it? Any ideas?" "I think he's top-notch, and I think we should take him. It's our luck to find such a student." "Yes, but have you seen his picture?" "What does that matter?" I exclaimed. "No, sir! I'm glad to hear you say that. I just wanted to see what our new professor is like." Gibbs appreciates how I can be straight with him, without thinking, "He's the dean, I'm new here, better be careful with what you say." I don't think as fast or as much; Very direct, just say what comes to mind. Another guy came to my office and wanted to talk philosophy with me.I don't remember much of what he said, but they wanted me to join a professors' fraternity—it was an anti-Semitic group, and they didn't think the Nazis were that bad.He tries to explain that the Jews do this, do that....What nonsense!I waited for him to finish, and then said to him: "Do you know that you have made a big mistake: I was raised in a Jewish family. "He got out, and I've since lost respect for certain professors in the humanities department at Cornell. At this time, my wife had passed away, and everything had to start all over again. I hoped to make some friends of the opposite sex.Social dances were very popular at the time, and Cornell was no exception, especially for freshmen and former students. I still remember the first prom I went to.While at Los Alamos, I hadn't danced or even socialized in three or four years.Therefore, I dance hard in this dance.I thought I danced well, and it wasn't hard to tell from the cheerful look of my partner. While I was dancing, I chatted with my dance partner, she would ask me about things, and I would ask a few questions back.But when I want to do another dance with a dancing girl, I have to look for her everywhere. "Do you want to dance again?" "No, I'm sorry, I have to get some air." Or "Oh, I'm going to the dressing room." - all excuses, two or three girls in a row!What's wrong with me?Am I too bad at dancing?Am I inferior? I asked another girl to dance, and the same greeting was repeated: "Are you from the undergraduate department, or from the graduate school?" Many of the students looked quite old, because they had been in the army for several years. "No, I'm a professor." "Eh? What do you teach?" "Theoretical Physics." "You probably also studied the atomic bomb!" "Yeah, I was in Los Alamos during the war." She said, "You're such a bloody liar!" and walked away. That was a huge relief.Everything was clear, I told every girl the simple, stupid truth, and never knew what was wrong. Obviously, from the beginning to the end, I was very polite, natural and generous, answering every question, everything was fine; then suddenly there was a "hoo!", nothing worked, and every girl left me Far away, I was really clueless until this girl said I was a liar. Then I dodged all the questions and the effect was very different: "Are you a freshman?" "Oh, no." "postgraduate?" "No." "what is your job?" "I don't want to say." "Why won't you tell me?" "I don't want to say . . . "—and they kept talking to me! I ended up bringing two girls over to my house that night, and one of them told me that I don't really have to be embarrassed about being a freshman, that there are a lot of people my age who are just starting college, and it really doesn't matter.They are sophomores, and they all try their best to show their motherly love and give me psychological construction; but I don't want to see so many distortions and misunderstandings; so I let them know my professor status.They were angry and felt cheated, and I did have a lot of trouble in my days as a young professor at Cornell. Anyway, I started teaching mathematical physics classes, and I also took a course in electromagnetism, planning to do some research.When I was doing my doctorate before the war, I invented a new method, using path integrals to do quantum mechanics, and there were a lot of topics I wanted to study. But back then, apart from preparing for classes, I used to go to the library, read The Arabian Nights, peek at the girls around me, and when it came time to do my research, I couldn't concentrate on my work.I feel a bit tired, not interested, I can't do research anymore!This situation seems to have been going on for several years.I remember once when I was thinking about gamma rays, I couldn't write any more after writing a line or two.I felt deeply that, because of the war and other things—the death of my wife, etc.—I was exhausted. Now, I can see more clearly.First, young people are often unaware of how much time it takes to prepare for a great class, especially when teaching for the first time;My classes were well taught and a lot of work was put into each class, but I had no idea that was a lot of work!So I just sat there reading The Arabian Nights, feeling like I was exhausted, constantly feeling sorry for myself. During this period, many universities or industries invited me to change jobs, and the salary was higher than mine at that time.But every time something like this happens, I get even more frustrated.I said to myself, "They're giving me so many great opportunities, but they have no idea that I'm burned out! How can I accept these offers? They're going to expect me to do something, but I can't do anything! I Can't think of anything..." Finally, a letter from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton appeared in the mailbox, and they invited me to be there.Einstein, von Neumann... those remarkable figures!They wrote to me and invited me to be a professor there!And it's not just any professor.Somehow they know how I feel about the Institute for Advanced Study: Like too much emphasis on theory, lack of real activities and challenges, etc.They wrote in the letter: "We fully understand that you have considerable interests in both experimentation and teaching, so we have specially arranged a teaching position, if you wish, half-time at Princeton University and half-time at the Institute for Advanced Study. " Advanced Institute!Special arrangement!Posts are even better than Einstein's!Too ideal, too perfect; too ridiculous! This is really ridiculous.Other invitations brought me down, but only up to a point.They just expected me to do something.But this invitation is so ridiculous, it's something I'll never be able to do, it's completely off the mark. Others just got it wrong, but this is absurd!I shaved, thinking and laughing. Then I thought, "They think you're so amazing, and you don't think you can live up to it, but it's not your responsibility to live up to their expectations!" It's a brilliant idea: you have absolutely no responsibility to be what other people think you should be.It's not my responsibility to live up to their expectations, it's their fault, not my failure. It was not my failure that the Institute for Advanced Study thought I was that good; it was clearly a mistake.And just as it occurred to me that they might be wrong, I also realized that this principle could be applied elsewhere, including my university.I am who I am, and if they expect me to be that good and pay me for it, then they should be damned. On that day, a miracle happened.Maybe I happened to hear me discussing these feelings with others, or I really knew me very well. In short, Wilson, who was the director of the Cornell Laboratory at the time, found me and said to me very seriously: "Feynman, you teach well; you are very good, we are very satisfied. When we hire a professor, we take all the risks, and if it's not good enough, there's nothing to say.But you shouldn't worry about what you're doing and what you're not doing. "At that time, he said it more brilliantly, and in short, these words liberated me from the guilt. Then I had another thought: I'm kind of sick of physics at the moment, but I used to be able to enjoy physics quite well.Why is this so?Because I used to play games with it.I used to do it on a whim—I didn't worry about whether it was important to the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting, whether it was fun.When I was in high school and saw the water coming out of the faucet gradually decrease, I wondered if I could study its curve, and I found that it was not difficult.In fact, I don't need to study it at all, and it is not important to the development of science, not to mention that someone has already studied it.But it made no difference to me: I would still invent something, do physics for fun. This is my new outlook on life.Well, I'm exhausted and I'll never achieve anything great.And the current teaching position at the university is very good, and I am quite happy with myself.Then just like reading "Arabian Nights", let me play the "physics game".Play whenever you want, without worrying about the point of doing so. One day that week, I was sitting in the restaurant and some people were playing next to me and threw a plate in the air.As the plate rose, I noticed that it was flying and swinging, and the red Cornell badge on the edge was also turning around, and the school badge was moving faster than the plate. I was idle anyway, so I set about calculating the motion of the plate.It turns out that when the angle is small, the speed of the school badge's rotation is twice that of the swing speed, which happens to be 2 to 1, and this is calculated from a very complicated equation.I think: "Is there a more fundamental way to deal with this phenomenon, such as understanding why it is exactly 2 to 1 from the perspective of force or dynamics?" I don't remember the details of the process, but in the end I figured out how the motion of the particles on the plate and how all the accelerated motions balanced each other out so that the speed ratio was exactly 2 to 1. I ran up to Bet and said, "Hey! I found something very interesting, when the plates spin like this... 2 to 1 because..." I told him to speed things up and all that. He said, "Feynman, that's interesting, but what's the point? Why are you working on it?" "Ha!" I said, "That's nothing important, I just thought it was fun." His reaction didn't discourage me in the slightest, I had made up my mind that I was going to enjoy physics as I pleased. I went on to work out the equation for the rotation of the plate.Then I thought about how electron orbits behave in situations where relativity comes into play, followed by the Dirac equation in electrodynamics, and then quantum electrodynamics.Before I had time to think about what was going on (it was happening so quickly), I was "playing"—actually working—on a topic I had loved before but had to stop working on at Los Alamos, And many old, but wonderful phenomena. Everything is so effortless, the puzzles are played so easily, it's like opening a bottle and everything flows out without clogging.I almost had the heart to resist!What I did was meaningless, but the result was exactly the opposite: the reason I was later awarded the Nobel Prize - Feynman diagrams and other research - all came from the day I "wasted" time on a rotating dinner plate superior!