Trivia

Sat on the Challenger US space shuttle disaster commission. He was the one who reported the o-ring as being the cause of the explosion.

His younger sister Joan was born 30 March 1927 in Queens and died 22 July 2020 in Oxnard, Caliornia. She was a renowned astrophysicist at the Jet Propulsion Lab and married to another astrophysicist Alexander Ruzmaikin.

According to "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman" written by Feynman himself, he started drumming during his time at Los Alamos as he was enchanted by the drumming of the Indians and because there was no entertainment there. He tried to give it up after he became a Professor (which coincided with his 10 month stay in Brazil) Later on he began to play again and taught himself African drumming after a friend gave him some sheet music based on the drumming of the Watusi tribe.

He was considered by many, including Stephen Hawking, to be the greatest scientific mind since Albert Einstein.

A high-school-administered IQ test estimated his IQ at 125-high, but "merely respectable" according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan did better, allowing her to claim that she was smarter. Years later he declined to join Mensa International, saying that his IQ was too low.

Won Nobel Prize in physics (1965). He was considering turning it down.

Signed all of his sketches and drawings under the pen name "Ofey" so no one would figure out it was him who was drawing them.

Has two children: Carl (1962-present) and Michelle Feynman (1968-present)

His last name is actually pronounced "Fine-man" although many Europeans (and those influenced by European customs) still pronounce it "Fane-man".

He was a late talker and hadn't spoken a single word by the time he was three.

He experimented with drugs such as Marijuana and LSD but gave up drinking alcohol when he showed minor signs of addiction.

He was of Lithuanian Jewish descent.

Pictured on one of four 37¢ USA commemorative postage stamps honoring American Scientists, issued 4 May 2005. Others honored in this issue were geneticist Barbara McClintock, mathematician John von Neumann, and physicist/thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 289-291. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode S6.E10, Chain of Command, Part I, the shuttle used by Picard, Worf and Crusher is called the Feynman.