Who is richard feynman?
He was a Nobel prize-winning physicist who died of cancer in 1988. He was a really interesting guy. There are some books containing stories about his life; a good one is called "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman." He liked to meet and hang out with all kinds of interesting people. He played a lot of practical jokes. As a young man, he was at Princeton when Albert Einstein (as an older man) was there, and he worked on building the world's first atomic bomb at Los Alamos during WWII. He was on the commission that investigated the 1986 explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. He taught at Cal Tech in the second half of his life. He also learned to draw and to play drums. Matthew Broderick played him in a 1996 movie called "Infinity"; Alan Alda played him in a play called "QED." He did a lot of things in theoretical physics; he shared a Nobel prize in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics.
What did Richard Feynman mean when he said "With no mathematics, physics would be behind of just a few weeks"?
Well, first off, I can't find that quote. Also, it's incorrect English -- "behind of" is not a construction found in English.(Update Oct 25: The OP was translating "la fisica sarebbe indietro di alcune settimane" -- so the construction falls out from Italian => English).Perhaps you meant something like "Without mathematics, progress in physics would only lag by a few weeks," but I can't find that (or anything like that) in Feynman's writings.What he did say is this:To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.Dr. Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (1965), Ch. 2People who are intimidated by math tend to forget how adept Feynman was at it. At Princeton, his talent in math stood out even among other elite physicists. Remember, this was a man who, in high school, was teaching himself calculus from Woods' Advanced Calculus -- a book written for college juniors!Cf: Richard Feynman on the Differences between Mathematics and Physics
What did Richard Feynman Do?
You'd like us to exaggerate? Oh well certainly, just for you. He strode the earth in 10 mile boots, sweeping airplanes out of the sky with his mighty breath. The sound of his call was like a million air raid sirens exploding in unison. Mighty men soiled themselves at the mention of his dog's name. Ok I'm tired now.
What did Richard Feynman mean when he said "No one understands quantum mechanics"?
The word 'understands' is the main focus here. In classical physics, everything is deteministic. You throw a ball and I will tell you the position and momentum of the ball at any instant of time, if the given details are sufficient. It seems so simple, makes sense and the human mind has no problems with it. There is just one path followed by the ball, we call it the least action path. Easy understanding and single value problems.Let us go to Quantum Mechanics. Once an electron moves, it is hard to find the position and momentum of an electron simultaneously with greater accuracy. You find position and you cannot find momentum and vice-versa. What is going to be the next position of an electron is completely unknown. Here comes the concept of probability. An electron is found at many places at the same time with some probability is mind-boggling. You hypothesize this position and it is somewhere else. Nobody knows what is actually happening. Common sense is lost. You draw figures of probabilities of an electron following certain paths. We talk in terms of waves. We talk about the wave-nature of an electron. We are not talking in terms of particle nature. We set probabilities. We define assumptions. Nothing is deterministic. Understanding of this mysterious world becomes complex. We are not sure about anything to happen 100%. All paths are probabilistic. Richard Feynman was obsessed with Q.E.D. He got perfect results with his assumptions, they were little flawed too but made sense. He still did not know what actually was happening. He was unable to predict the certainty of the things happening. Here, he came with the quotation that 'Nobody understands Quantum Physics'. His main quote was to make people aware that we look for certainties and then conclude this is understood but in Quantum world, certainties are pesudo and all we can come out is with probability. The probabilities we set can all be wrong. It depends on the game of chances and such games are always unpredictable, hard to understand.
What did Richard Feynman mean when he said "You can't fool nature"?
Richard Feynman's famous conclusion to his report on the shuttle Challenger accident, which arose again in the Columbia accident, is "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." -- Edward TufteFeynman was referring to a need for prudence and engineering forethought to take precedence over public opinion about "How safe is safe enough". The O-rings were the issue in the Challenger disaster. It has been postulated that there was a safer, but much more expensive, alternative to O-rings.Edit: But Neal King already said that in the question comments section, which I should have read first before posting this answer. Hat's off to Neal. I couldn't have said it any more clearly than that.
What do you think of Richard Feynman's quote?
I don't believe in heaven or hell but I still think the quote is pretty cool.