I do theoretical physics research: I built a working quantum electrodynamics, invented the diagrams physicists now use to calculate with it, and shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for that science.
On the 1986 Rogers Commission I clamped a sample of the shuttle's O-ring material, dropped it in ice water, and showed on a televised hearing that it lost resilience in the cold — the engineering cause the commission confirmed.
In my 1974 Caltech commencement address on cargo cult science I told graduates that scientific research rests on a kind of utter honesty, and that it starts with not fooling yourself.
When SLAC's late-1960s deep inelastic scattering experiments showed point-like particles inside protons and neutrons, my parton model read the research data without extra hypotheses — including the 45% of momentum carried by neutral particles.
Asked in the early 1960s to "spruce up" Caltech's undergraduate teaching, I spent three years building an introductory physics course that became The Feynman Lectures on Physics, still selling for its deep understanding of the science.
In my 1959 Caltech lecture I described machines built at atomic scale, chemical synthesis by mechanical manipulation, and a swallowable surgical robot — a talk now frequently cited in nanotechnology and microtechnology research.
My Caltech research spanned electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force and gravity: superfluid helium, the V–A theory of weak decay with Gell-Mann, partons, gravity ghosts and early quantum computing.
Teaching in Brazil, reviewing California textbooks in 1964 and addressing science teachers in 1966, I argued that education built on rote memorisation does not produce learning; science teaching must train doubt.
Between 1947 and 1951 I reworked the infinite integrals of quantum electrodynamics with my path integral method, introduced Feynman diagrams, and published the theory in a series of Physical Review papers that became standard physics research tools.
Burned out after the war, I started solving physics problems for my own satisfaction — like a wobbling plate tossed in the Cornell cafeteria. That play with rotation equations proved important to my Nobel-winning science.
At the Oak Ridge enrichment plant I helped engineers devise storage procedures so enriched uranium could not reach criticality, and I insisted on teaching the workers the nuclear physics behind the rules.
At Los Alamos I led a group in Hans Bethe's Theoretical Division, developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for fission yield, and helped set up IBM punched-card computing for the project's science and engineering calculations.
My undergraduate thesis gave the Hellmann–Feynman theorem, and my 1942 Princeton doctorate applied the principle of stationary action to quantum mechanics — the research basis for path integrals and my diagrams.
