Feynman , the biography by James Gleick.
I think the title of the book is Genius. Not to start a reading preference war, but I find Gleick a little irritating. It's a good read, but I kept wanting more and more personal interaction stuff (with other scientists) and it wasn't there. Nevertheless, it is easy, it's worth the time, and there's some very interesting and maybe surprising details. For example, Gleick says that an IQ test given to F in highschool gave a score of 126. This is nothing to sneeze at, really, but on a wild stab I'd guess nearly every reader of this forum is at least that high, and most probably higher. (Okay, I don't believe IQ is 'really' intelligence, per se, but that score is still a big surprise BECAUSE the kinds of things tested on IQ tests is exactly the kind of thing at which RPF excelled.)
My preference in the science biography thing is the autobiography. Marc Kac's "Enigmas of Chance," for example, or Heisenberg's "Physics and Beyond." I love this stuff.
Kac has an interesting take on Feynman, btw. He says that there are two kinds of genius. As is always the case with me, I can't recall the specifics, but my assimilation is this: The first kind of genius, you look at what the person has done and you think to yourself, "Man, if I had tried harder, worked smarter, or done this instead of that, I just *MIGHT* have come up with this myself." The second kind of genius, you look at what the person has done and you think to yourself, "This is magic! How could this person possibly have gotten from point A to point B? Even after the steps are revealed, it still seem like mysticism." (I'm quoting a hypothetical person in my assimilated and faulty understanding, and not the actual book.) Feynman, Kac says, is an example of the latter kind of genius.
I guess my reaction to snotty and condescending people is the same as Father Steve's. I'm also repulsed by them. OTOH, I work with a LOT of people who are a lot smarter than I'll ever be (not to mention most of my friends are a lot smarter). These people have varying supplies of patience and other social skills. I've learned to appreciate them for what they offer and not necessarily for what I expect them to be.
Way off the subject:
When I was a freshman, a new sophomore came, a filthy rich, spoiled snotty guy who was also very smart. He invited me to come to the lab where he was tutoring. The girl was trying to write a FORTRAN program that would multiply to arrays. He gave a lecture to her, essentially writing the important section of code to her. Now I did something stupid. If I'd been minding my manners, I should have understood that it's not an invited guest's place to question the teacher, but it's not easy (not for me at least) to know what the right thing to do is on the spur of a the moment. I said simply, "I don't think that's right." I didn't say this in a nasty way or a gotcha kinda way, but in a sincere and maybe even self-effacing way, I swear. Suddenly, this fellow I hardly knew at the time rips into me - for about 10 to 15 minutes - maybe longer he keeps ripping me, yelling calling me every kind of idiot imaginable, making devastating use of sarcasm. I never said a word in reply. His student was mortified. I realized my mistake and felt horrible myself, but I didn't know what else to do other than stand there, take it, and give him a chance to cool off. Eventually he does cool off and he asks me state my point. I ask three questions, the first two of which he answers very quickly: "When you multiply a 5 by 5 matrix by a 5 by 5 matrix, what do you get?" "Another 5 x 5 matrix, of course." "Okay, if you have a new 5 by 5 matrix, that means you somehow have to define all the elements of the new matrix, for example, say there must be an element (3,4), correct?" "Of course." "Very good, then, how do you get element (3,4) from that algorithm?"
He pauses for maybe 5 minutes and doesn't say a word while he looks through the program and finally he says, very meekly, "You know ... you're right." That was it. After that we were always very good friends. He never said another bad word to me, never lost his temper - in fact, he always seemed uncommonly polite. He became my teacher for PASCAL (another computer language) and I learned the finer points of recursion (cool programming technique) and a few other things from him. I feel bad that he never learned anything from me. (Being a freshman, I didn't have much to offer.)
This is not my only experience like this. I'm not saying we should tolerate bad behavior, but it's easy, I think, to get caught up in the snottiness of it all and fail to appreciate what the other person does bring to the table.
(BTW, this matrix thing is no great feat. The mathematician(s) in here will attest that this is trivial stuff, and it's very easy to make a simple error in programming. Even brilliant programmers get bugs.)
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