QED

Name: QED
Author: Richard Feynman
ISBN: 0140125051

by Richard Feynman · 1985

He got the Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics, which is essentially the Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel of physics. It’s the most successful physical theory humans have ever devised. It describes the interaction between light and matter, between photons and electrons. That interaction governs absolutely everything around you: the forces that hold together the molecules in your body, that burn the petrol in a car, that make the ground beneath your feet solid. It governs everything except gravity and the nuclear forces – the things that go on inside a nucleus like radioactivity. Apart from that quantum electrodynamics explains the world around us and predicts what we see to an obscene degree of accuracy. Yes, and that’s the point. When Feynman was at Cal Tech, this wealthy couple who’d grown up in the same New York neighbourhood as he had said, “Look, you’ve won this Nobel Prize, now explain to ordinary people what for.” And Feynman said, “No, it’s too complicated.” But eventually he did this series of public lectures, and that was the book. It’s a tiny book and in it he describes the whole of quantum electrodynamics without a single equation. It’s the most fantastic achievement: the most successful theory in physics described by the guy who invented it in 150 pages.

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Marcus Chown

"He got the Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics, which is essentially the Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel of physics. It’s the most successful physical theory humans have ever devised. It describes the interaction between light and matter, between photons and electrons. That interaction governs absolutely everything around you: the forces that hold together the molecules in your body, that burn the petrol in a car, that make the ground beneath your feet solid. It governs everything except gravity and the nuclear forces – the things that go on inside a nucleus like radioactivity. Apart from that quantum electrodynamics explains the world around us and predicts what we see to an obscene degree of accuracy. Yes, and that’s the point. When Feynman was at Cal Tech, this wealthy couple who’d grown up in the same New York neighbourhood as he had said, “Look, you’ve won this Nobel Prize, now explain to ordinary people what for.” And Feynman said, “No, it’s too complicated.” But eventually he did this series of public lectures, and that was the book. It’s a tiny book and in it he describes the whole of quantum electrodynamics without a single equation. It’s the most fantastic achievement: the most successful theory in physics described by the guy who invented it in 150 pages."

Cosmology · fivebooks.com