The Beat of a Different Drum: Life and Science of Richard P. Feynman [Hardcover]

My dad ,Jagdish Mehra, passed away on September 14, 2008 . He was Richard Feynman's only official biographer . He authored and edited a lot of books! Jagdish Mehra was awarded both the Humboldt and Leibniz prizes for physics. He lectured all over the world . He knew these scientists of the twentieth century personally. He interviewed more physicists and men and women of letters than anyone . I know because I was there - Mead , Huxley , Galbraith, Macleish , Rao, C P Snow. He chronicled what he called "The Golden Age of Theoretical Physics". He lived for his work and he worked hard. I remember watching a lecture of his at the University of Texas- the hall was packed,standing room only . You could hear a pin drop as this brilliant man , armed with first hand knowledge and an array of stunning equations, held the room in the palm of his hand.He had what the great thinkers of his time said about him -the gift of " Historical Insight ".But that gift came with a huge price attached to it ! He suffered from heart disease and diabetes because he burned the candle at both ends. He knew them all- Heisenberg , Fermi ,Pauli ,Dirac ,Bohr, Feynman , Holton , Oppenheimer , Bethe, Dyson , Enz , Lamb ,Salam , Schwinger ,Sudarshan, Wigner , Wheeler , Weisskopf , Weisner, Prigogine , Casimir , Teller and Gell-Mann . It is widely known that Mehra was instrumental in Prigogine receiving the Nobel Prize! Nobody else was everywhere at once illuminating the scientific accomplishments of these physicists.These Nobel laureates enjoyed my father's company and valued his work too because no one else was chronicling in scholarly detail their accomplishments. So when I read some of these cheap shot reviews by people who are not as classically educated,witty,erudite and just plain intelligent as my dad I get a little riled up . He worked so hard to complete his History of Science and he was very proud of his Feynman biography . Let's face it - Mehra is the one that is most quoted and used as a source more than others because he was more insightful and thorough in detail.The inaccuracy of the "Library " review galls! Mehra's assistance was a source Gleick used for his second hand book.After all it was Mehra who Feynman selected to be his scientific biographer. I too am what Feynman called "A chip of the old block" - a tiny chip at that but I would argue that my dad wrote a pretty good book about the thought process of a great physicist in "The Beat of a Different Drum". He did not like to be edited , but that was about his ego - he always thought he said it better and more precisely than others . I don't think Gleick's book is very good at all . John and Mary Gribbin do a very fine job of writing and editing their wonderful Feynman biography -"Richard Feynman-A Life in Science". If you want something highly insightful but a little easier to read than Mehra and better written than Gleick, I'd turn there . I 'll bet those who found the math tedious didn't really understand its elegance and those who found the prose too detailed and factual didn't really get the value of precision . We are not going to get another historian of science like Dr. J anytime soon. Another part of the story that I think is very important is the fact that Dr. Mehra knew Richard Feynman for thirty years and Feynman really enjoyed my dad's brilliant conversational abilities. That intellectual interaction began at Caltech in 1958 and developed over the years. It was Hans Bethe who would almost twenty-five years later ask my dad to help Gleick ( who was four years old when Mehra and Feynman were batting around math problems and physics equations like ping-pong balls, who never knew Feynman personally and certainly had not had deep discussions of QED with him) with a biography he was attempting . Hans Bethe knew the esteem Feynman held for Mehra and so James Gleick got valuable information from my dad -long after the story was over and had already been written, of course . Mehra's intention was to write a a detailed scientific biography complemented by his personal knowledge of Feynman's life and work and exhaustive interviews of eighty sources-something that no one else could really do and and something that no one else has ever done!! This is important work and deserves to be read by every student of Physics. As Oppenheimer said it would take a "modern day Sophocles" to chronicle the History of Quantum Theory. That is indeed correct and that is what Jagdish Mehra did .

There are two type of reviews of this book. Those who were interested in the man from a personal, non science perspective and those who know science, are interested and can read and understand Feynman's scientific work. Those who interested in the more entertaining books on Feynman, e.g., Gleick, and some of Feynman's own books should tread on this book lightly for it includes mathematical and scientific analysis you cannot get from the other books. On the other hand, Jagdish Medra does an excellent job in reciting some of the personal stuff between him and his father, which were crucial in forming both Feynman's personal and scientific personality. This is the only book you will get that. Mehra did not include some of the more interesting andecotes that are in Feynman's books, so it is not a complete biography despite its length and breath. If you are interested in some of Feynman's reasons for his ideas and the context of those ideas, then you must read this book. If you are not interested, for example, in Maupertuis, Lagrange, Hamilton ideas on minimum action -- you might have to skip large parts of the book because Mehra recounts Feynman's ideas in detail (including all his equations).
I have found the best way to understand science and personality (Feynman was of a temperament Inventor Rational) is to read detailed biographies of the principles -- Jagdish Mehra did excellent job with this biography, you can pick up the other details of Feynman in his own books. I am sure Richard would give Mehra five stars.

Jagdish Mehra is, to be sure, not one of the great literary stylists, and his notion of historical writing is to throw in every available fact and save evaluation and historical analysis for a later date. Fair enough, I say: his is not the final word on Feynman, nor does he think so. Feynman's contribution to Quantum Electrodynamics is the central problem for any real biographer, and here Mehra is on stronger grounds. By its very nature, the book is steeped in math, and you will need to be up on calculus and Fourier expansions, not to mention the basic points of QED to read it with profit. It is good, solid history of science, but hardly a page-flipper for reading on the beach this summer.