GREAT SCIENTISTS: THE FANTASTIC MR FEYNMAN

BBC - THE FANTASTIC MR FEYNMAN

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SEBASTIAAN DEERENBERG

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REVIEW

GERARD O'DONOVAN reviews The Fantastic Mr Feynman

A documentary exploring the life and career of noted physicist Richard Feynmann.

4 out of 5 stars

Richard Feynman, whose diagrams provided the first intuitive way of drawing particle interactions

By Gerard O'Donovan10:30PM BST 12 May 2013CommentsComments

Recently I watched The Challenger, an engrossing BBC Two drama starring William Hurt as a scientist battling terminal illness and deliberate obfuscation to get at the truth behind the 1986 space shuttle disaster. Beautifully crafted, it revealed as much about the indefatigable spirit of the physicist Richard Feynman as it did of his discovery that shockingly basic engineering failings had caused the disaster. It was aired again ahead of The Fantastic Mr Feynman (BBC Two, Sunday), an absorbing documentary that burrowed deep into the life of “one of the most extraordinary scientists of the 20th century”.

This was biography in the heroic mould, an unalloyed celebration of a man whose maverick tendencies affected everything he did in life (he died in 1988), from his wartime work on the A-bomb, to the problem solving that won him the Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. But the film also revealed a restless spirit who was as uncomfortable with his Nobel prize (“I don’t believe in honours, honours bother me”) as he was with knowing that his wartime work had contributed to tens of thousands of deaths.

At root were emotional factors: an adored father who instilled a dyed-in-the-wool contempt for authority; and an adored first wife, Arlene, lost to tuberculosis at 26. Factors that tempered his remarkable mathematical gifts with a broad streak of humanity and a sense of life’s uncertainty.

Feynman’s impish charm and bubbling-over desire to share his inexhaustible scientific wonder crackled off the screen. “He discovered a new law of nature; only very few people did that,” said his son Carl with pride. More likely though it is Feynman’s still rarer skills as a communicator of science – living on in the internet age through countless YouTube tributes and his enduringly popular books – that will keep his place secure among the greats.

Grateful thanks to SEBASTIAAN DEERENBERG, GERARD O'DONOVAN, BBC and YouTube.