Richard P. Feynman summary

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Richard Feynman.

Richard P. Feynman, (born May 11, 1918, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 15, 1988, Los Angeles, Calif.), U.S. theoretical physicist. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project. From 1950 he taught at the California Institute of Technology. The Feynman diagram was one of the many problem-solving tools he invented. With Julian Schwinger (1918–94) and Shinichiro Tomonaga (1906–79), he shared a 1965 Nobel Prize for his brilliant work on quantum electrodynamics. He was principally responsible for identifying the cause of the 1986 Challenger disaster. Famed for his wit, he also wrote best-selling books on science. His work, which tied together all the varied phenomena at work in light, radio, electricity, and magnetism, altered the way scientists understand the nature of waves and particles.

Nobel Prize Summary

Nobel Prize, any of the prizes (five in number until 1969, when a sixth was added) that are awarded annually from a fund bequeathed for that purpose by the Swedish inventor and industrialist Alfred Nobel. The Nobel Prizes are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards given for intellectual

quantum electrodynamics Summary

Quantum electrodynamics (QED), quantum field theory of the interactions of charged particles with the electromagnetic field. It describes mathematically not only all interactions of light with matter but also those of charged particles with one another. QED is a relativistic theory in that Albert

Feynman diagram Summary

Feynman diagram, a graphical method of representing the interactions of elementary particles, invented in the 1940s and ’50s by the American theoretical physicist Richard P. Feynman. Introduced during the development of the theory of quantum electrodynamics as an aid for visualizing and calculating

Manhattan Project Summary

Manhattan Project, U.S. government research project (1942–45) that produced the first atomic bombs. See Britannica’s interactive timeline of the Manhattan Project. American scientists, many of them refugees from fascist regimes in Europe, took steps in 1939 to organize a project to exploit the