<story><title>Oppenheimer&apos;s recommendation letter for Richard Feynman</title><url>http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/he-is-second-dirac-only-this-time-human.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>danso</author><text>I highly recommend both of Feynman&apos;s memoirs:&lt;p&gt;&quot;Surely You&apos;re Joking, Mr. Feynman!&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Character/dp/0393316041&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Char...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What Do You Care What Other People Think?&quot;
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/0393320928/ref=pd_sim_b_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/039332...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;He&apos;s of course a good writer. But if you didn&apos;t know any better, you&apos;d think him to be a sort of adult-Pollyanna, someone of innocent optimism and immense curiosity. It reminds me a lot of reading Woz&apos;s autobiography, in fact; I guess it makes sense that this characteristic of constantly questioning and challenging the norms is what leads to great innovation.&lt;p&gt;In a chapter from &quot;Surely You&apos;re Joking&quot;, Feynman describes how he was curious about the accepted fact that dogs have a much better sense of smell than humans. So he went around sniffing objects held by humans, even getting down on the carpet on his hands and knees to see if he could smell his own footprints:
&lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/WBbw1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://goo.gl/WBbw1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s an amusing story, but one that is very telling of Feynman&apos;s insatiable curiosity and scientific mind. He did these smell-experiments not as a child, but when he was a scientist at Los Alamos.</text></comment>
<story><title>Oppenheimer&apos;s recommendation letter for Richard Feynman</title><url>http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/he-is-second-dirac-only-this-time-human.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>lpolovets</author><text>Thank you for sharing this, it&apos;s a neat little piece of history.&lt;p&gt;Two side notes:&lt;p&gt;1) Letters Of Note has some excellent content. Here are a few more letters that have been discussed on HN previously: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1424324&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1424324&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045311&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045311&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) I&apos;m a big Feynman fan, and several of my several friends are as well. We&apos;ve read most of his biographies and autobiographies, and were recently surprised to find that a new biography came out a few months ago. It&apos;s supposed to be quite good, and has strong focus on Feynman&apos;s scientific accomplishments. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Man-Richard-Feynmans-Discoveries/dp/0393064719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Man-Richard-Feynmans-Discoveri...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>