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发信人: asdf (变量), 信区: Science
标  题: 费曼故事(九)
发信站: 紫丁香 (Tue Jun 30 21:52:08 1998), 转信

发信人: tnt (TNT), 信区: Physics
标  题: fey
发信站: 空间科学BBS站 . Fri Mar 28 06:42:06 1997

                            A Physicist for Lunch

     � � � � One thing that Feynman did not suffer gladly was fools,
     especially smart fools. He was very tolerant of those who could
     not understand, but extremely intolerant of those who refused to
     understand.

     � � � � One day a physicist friend of mine Ron Unz asked if he
     could be introduced to his hero - Richard Feynman. Ron had an
     impressive list of credentials behind him - winner of the
     prestigious Westinghouse Science Award, degrees from Harvard and
     Cambridge, and a former graduate student of Steven Hawking. (A
     little aside, Ron was later to briefly gain some fame after he
     became a multimillionaire and ran briefly against Pete Wilson in
     the race for the California Senate).

     � � � � In addition to Ron's impressive credentials, he had
     developed a rather controversial theory that charge was not
     conserved. He had published a paper about it in Physical Review
     and he wanted to discuss his idea with Feynman. I agreed to invite
     him to one of our private lunch sessions.

     � � � � On the day in question, Ron made a terrible mistake. First
     of all he showed up in a suit. That was certain to give a bad
     impression to Feynman. Then I made a mistake, I spilled the beans
     to Feynman just before lunch about Ron's ideas. Feynman roared,
     and declared that he would refuse to eat with anyone that stupid.
     Feynman turned and walked away. I went back to Ron and told him
     what had happened. Ron was terribly disappointed, but I told him
     that I would persist. I went back to Feynman and convinced him to
     still have lunch with us. Feynman said, "Ok, as long as we don't
     talk physics. I don't want to hear anything about it."

     � � � � So I got Ron to join us. No sooner than five minutes into
     the conversation, Feynman turns to Ron and says, "OK, what's this
     dopey idea you have in physics?" Ron, who is an extremely
     confident guy, turned and started to explain his theory. Feynman,
     booming loudly declared, "Did you think about this....? Did you
     think about that...?" The response was almost inevitably, "No." On
     it went. I must say, I have never seen such a quick and merciless
     massacre of another individual in my life. It was sad.

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