FEYND OUT MORE

If Sheldon Cooper of the long-running TV comedy The Big Bang Theory, reminds you of Richard Feynman, it’s probably because the writers worked hard to draw allusions. Cooper works at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, just as Feynman did. He’s irreverent and hates authority too. He once made a scientific breakthrough while looking at a plate shatter, just like Feynman. And he plays the bongos.

But Sheldon’s just the latest. Feynman’s colourful life and contributions to science have inspired everything from comics to the opera. Here’s what he wrote and what’s been written and created about him

Feynman’s semi-autobiographical works include th ■ iconic Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? They make his life sound so breezy and straightforward, you’ll wonder wh you’re not a Nobel Prize-winning physicist yourself.

James Gleick’s definitive 1992 biography, Genius, is a ■ book about a scientist by a science writer who makes the man and his work both comprehensible and contextualised. For emphasis on technical material there’s Jagdish Mehra’s 1994 book The Beat of a Different Drum.

The 1996 film Infinity covers the physicist’s early life. ■ Matthew Broderick directed, produced and played Feynma

The BBC TV movie The Challenger traced Feynman’s role in ■ investigating the 1986 NASA disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed. The 2013 film recreates Feynman’s pursuit of the truth despite opposition from NASA, and the toll it took on his failing health.

In Feynman’s Rainbow, physicist Leonard Mlodinow ■ grapples with intellectual insecurities and self-doubt at Caltech in the early 1980s, finding a friend in the ageing Dr Feynman.

In 1965, Caltech asked Feynman to rewrite their undergrad ■ ate physics course. The famous Feynman Lectures on Physic remain the best introduction to what was known about th subject in the mid-1960s.

The BBC featured Feynman on an episode of their ■ popular documentary show Horizon. When The Pleasu of Finding Things Out aired in 1982 it was a surprise hit. Viewers loved the idea of a scientist discussing life, philosophy and the science contained within the beaut a flower.

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is also the title of ■ collection of his short works. It includes his famous lectu What Is And What Should Be the Role of Scientific Cultur Modern Society.

Some of his non-technical 1963 lectures on the relation ■ ship between religion and science, and pseudoscience hav been produced as a short book, The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist. If you’re interested in the nature of reality, try Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces. If you can stomach more technical ideas, there’s his Six Not-So-Easy Pieces. But your best chance to understand the nature of light and energy without a Physics PhD is probably his QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter.

QED, a two-character play about a fictional day in the life ■ of an ageing Feynman premiered in 2001 and was staged on Broadway. Actor Alan Alda played Feynman.

There’s even an opera. Feynman premiered in 2005, with a ■ percussion quartet backing a solo baritone Dr Feynman as hi life story unfolds onstage. They did not play the bongos, unfortunately.

See ‘Curious and Comic’ for more on the 2011 graphic ■

novel, Feynman.