Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character is the first memoir of Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Richard Feynman, published in 1985. The book is directed primarily at non-scientists, and the anecdotes Feynman recalls concentrate on explaining how he came to have a reputation as an eccentric who craved adventure and mischief. The conversational tone of the autobiography derives in part from the way it was produced; most of the text is transcribed from tape-recorded conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton, who shared Feynman’s hobby as a musician and was the son of one of Feynman’s colleagues at the California Institute of Technology. On the surface, the memoir revels in Feynman’s fraternity pranks, social blunders, ability to crack safes, and participation in a Brazilian samba school, but each adventure also gives insight into how one of the most important scientists of the Atomic Age developed from a precocious child during the Great Depression into one of the most respected thinkers and teachers of his era. The edition used for this guide was published by Norton in 2018.

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