Post by @mxchara@cyberpunk.lol

2026-08-26 16:55 UTC

@davidculley@hachyderm.io was Feynman even really that important as a physicist? I know that he had some role in formulating the theory of quantum electrodynamics but so did other physicists--no discovery of such importance isn't being simultaneously worked on. He seems to be chiefly important as Caltech's designated science hero, marketed relentlessly as such, even though he was a total shit and, frankly, from the bits I've seen, not a good lecturer.

Replies (1)

@bstacey@icosahedron.website 2026-08-26 17:30

@mxchara@cyberpunk.lol @davidculley@hachyderm.io He shared the Nobel Prize with two other physicists who made very closely related contributions to the same topic all at nearly the same time (Schwinger and Tomonaga), and arguably there should have been a fourth (Dyson) if the Prize rules didn't forbid it. Did he figure out important stuff? Sure. Would other people have figured out the same stuff if he hadn't been there to do it? Yeah, probably, given how science works. The calculation technique now known as "Feynman diagrams" made his contribution stand out from Schwinger's and Tomonaga's, but looking at how calculations were done in statistical physics already, it's hard to imagine that those diagrams wouldn't have been invented soon enough even if Feynman hadn't been there to do it. Whether he was a good teacher is a matter of taste. Among physicists (as opposed to podcasters), his books have the rep of being good for revisiting a subject but not for learning it the first time.

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