Feynman's Rainbow
A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
Chapter One
IN A GRAY CEMENT building on the olive tree-lined Caltech campus on
California Boulevard in Pasadena, a thin man with longish hair steps
into his modest office. Some students, on this planet less than
one-third as long as the professor has been, stop in the hallway and
stare. No one would say a word if he didn't come to the office this
day, but nothing could keep him away, especially not the surgery,
the effects of which he would no longer allow to ruin his routine.
Outside, bright sun bathes the palm trees, but it is no longer the
withering sun of the summer. The hills rise, brown now giving way to
green, their vegetation reborn with the coming of the more
hospitable winter season. The professor might have wondered how many
more cycles of green and brown he would live to witness; he knew he
had a disease that would kill him. He loved life, but he believed in
natural law, and not in miracles. When his rare form of cancer was
first discovered in the summer of 1978, he had searched the
literature. Five-year survival rates were generally reported to ... read full excerpt from: Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life ebook
