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Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life

by Leonard Mlodinow

This short memoir was a delight to read and resonated with me personally in several ways. Mlodinow recounts his first years as a theoretical physicist at Cal Tech, a young scientist filled with personal doubts, and how his friendship with Feynman led him to new ways to view his career and life itself.

Cal Tech campus

I myself have fond memories of Cal Tech, where I was a student for four terms (freshman year and first term of sophomore year) before transferring voluntarily (I had a B average) to Cal-Berkeley in 1959 (with a scholarship). On the surface, I seemed to be doing more than fine since at the beginning of my sophomore year I published a number theory article in the University of Oklahoma's Mathematics Magazine, a jump start for an undergraduate. But there was a rub. Two of them.

Through high school I was tight with four other "science geeks," we five the brightest nerds at Pasadena High School. We all applied to the same five colleges and expected to be accepted by all of them: Cal Tech, MIT, Harvard, Stanford and Cal-Berkeley. To our shock, each was accepted by only two schools. All were accepted by Berkeley. None by Harvard. Two by Stanford, where they went, one by MIT, where he went, and myself and M. by Cal Tech, where we went. The rub for me was that I wasn't leaving town, wasn't leaving home. Living at home, I felt like Cal Tech was an extension of high school.

Except for one thing, the second rub. I was meeting lots of guys who clearly were much, much brighter than I was. This had never happened to me before. Sure, I was ahead of the curve by publishing as a sophomore but I could see the handwriting on the wall, that my future was limited because I wasn't a genius, after all. I could become a great engineer but I didn't want to become an engineer. I wanted to be a pure mathematician. No way.

I also wanted to move away from home. Though it seemed crazy to leave a prestigious school with a B average, I found support from an unexpected source, my chemistry professor Linus Pauling, who assured me that the world needed good philosophers and good historians as much as it needed good scientists. 

I also had something else to deal with. M., my neighbor and friend who had gone to Cal Tech with me, had committed suicide the summer after his freshman year. (I read later that Cal Tech has one of the highest suicide rates among students.) Maybe he couldn't deal with the slam into reality that we experienced. I dealt with it by becoming a jock: I lettered in football, basketball and track at Cal Tech! I also suspect that M. was dealing with the personal issue of being a closet gay man. At any rate, his suicide added grief to staying, it seemed. So in January, 1959 I finally left home.

But I've always cherished my short time at Cal Tech. Reading about it made me homesick.

The campus was beautiful, and serene. And it was large, considering that Caltech undergraduates numbered only in the hundreds. Most of it lay on a site several blocks on each side that was not intruded upon by city streets. Instead, broad sidewalks punctuated by well-kept lawns, shrubbery, and craggy gray olive trees wound their way amongst the low buildings, many of Mediterranean-style architecture. It was a place to feel peaceful and protected, free to forget the outside world and focus on pursuing your ideas.

Interestingly enough, I most recall the contemplative consequences of exhaustion during track workouts. The coach would have us run at half or two-thirds speed for 220 yards, then jog 220, crank it up 220, jog 220, and so on, round and around the track until we fell in exhaustion, which became a contest to see who could last the longest. I got a lot of thinking done during this!

Mlodinow gets into physics that will go over the heads of many readers (some of it went over mine) but the focus here is on his emotional journey, and I found his story gripping. I'm glad I stumbled upon this short memoir.

STAYING PLAYFUL, having fun, keeping a youthful outlook. It was clear to me that for Feynman, staying open to all the possibilities of nature, or life, was a key to both his creativity and his happiness.