“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”: Adventures of a Curious Character

Another thing like this happened when one of the publishers sent me a leather briefcase with my name nicely written in gold on it. I gave them the same stuff: “I can’t accept it; I’m judging some of the books you’re publishing. I don’t think you understand that!”

One commissioner, who had been there for the greatest length of time, said, “I never accept the stuff; it makes me very upset. But it just goes on.”

But I really missed one opportunity. If I had only thought fast enough, I could have had a very good time on that commission. I got to the hotel in San Francisco in the evening to attend my very first meeting the next day, and I decided to go out to wander in the town and eat something. I came out of the elevator, and sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby were two guys who jumped up and said, “Good evening, Mr. Feynman. Where are you going? Is there something we can show you in San Francisco?” They were from a publishing company, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.

“I’m going out to eat.”

“We can take you out to dinner.”

“No, I want to be alone.”

“Well, whatever you want, we can help you.”

I couldn’t resist. I said, “Well, I’m going out to get myself in trouble.”

“I think we can help you in that, too.”

“No, I think I’ll take care of that myself.” Then I thought, “What an error! I should have let all that stuff operate and keep a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!” And when I found out about the two-million-dollar difference, God knows what the pressures are!

Alfred Nobel’s Other Mistake

In Canada they have a big association of physics students. They have meetings; they give papers, and so on. One time the Vancouver chapter wanted to have me come and talk to them. The girl in charge of it arranged with my secretary to fly all the way to Los Angeles without telling me. She just walked into my office. She was really cute, a beautiful blonde. (That helped; it’s not supposed to, but it did.) And I was impressed that the students in Vancouver had financed the whole thing. They treated me so nicely in Vancouver that now I know the secret of how to really be entertained and give talks: Wait for the students to ask you.

One time, a few years after I had won the Nobel Prize, some kids from the Irvine students’ physics club came around and wanted me to talk. I said, “I’d love to do it. What I want to do is talk just to the physics club. But—I don’t want to be immodest—I’ve learned from experience that there’ll be trouble.”

I told them how I used to go over to a local high school every year to talk to the physics club about relativity, or whatever they asked about. Then, after I got the Prize, I went over there again, as usual, with no preparation, and they stuck me in front of an assembly of three hundred kids. It was a mess!

I got that shock about three or four times, being an idiot and not catching on right away. When I was invited to Berkeley to give a talk on something in physics, I prepared something rather technical, expecting to give it to the usual physics department group. But when I got there, this tremendous lecture hall is full of people! And I know there’s not that many people in Berkeley who know the level at which I prepared my talk. My problem is, I like to please the people who come to hear me, and I can’t do it if everybody and his brother wants to hear: I don’t know my audience then.

After the students understood that I can’t just easily go over somewhere and give a talk to the physics club, I said, “Let’s cook up a dull-sounding title and a dull-sounding professor’s name, and then only the kids who are really interested in physics will bother to come, and those are the ones we want, OK? You don’t have to sell anything.”

A few posters appeared on the Irvine campus: Professor Henry Warren from the University of Washington is going to talk about the structure of the proton on May 17th at 3:00 in Room D102.

Then I came and said, “Professor Warren had some personal difficulties and was unable to come and speak to you today, so he telephoned me and asked me if I would talk to you about the subject, since I’ve been doing some work in the field. So here I am.” It worked great.

But then, somehow or other, the faculty adviser of the club found out about the trick, and he got very angry at them. He said, “You know, if it were known that Professor Feynman was coming down here, a lot of people would like to have listened to him.”

The students explained, “That’s just it!” But the adviser was mad that he hadn’t been allowed in on the joke.