Richard Feynman: the man who helped end WW2

Richard Phillips Feynman was a Nobel prize winning scientist. He was born on May 11th 1918 in America and grew up to become a very famous theoretical physicist. He is mainly known for his work with the team which developed the atomic bomb, as part of the the Manhattan project, but he did much more than that. He spent most of his career working on quantum theory which means the study of sub atomic particles and how they work. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize.

He was also famous for being a great all-rounder: he played music, wrote poetry and loved to play practical jokes on his colleagues.

Apparently, his colleagues used to tell him to unlock a safe in a room and he would stay in that room for a couple of hours and when he came out he would have opened the safe and then he would have taken out everything that was in there. Except when he walked out of the room, he wouldn’t say he had opened he would just walk out as if he hadn`t and his colleagues wouldn’t check the room because they thought he hadn’t done it.

Feynman was on the team who created the Atomic bombs which were notoriously dropped on Japan out of a silver-plated B-29 bomber plane called Enola Gay in 1945. This marked the end of the Japanese involvement in the war and was the beginning of the end of the World war in Europe. Hundreds of thousands Japanese people died in the two bombings and unfortunately for Feynman that is what he is known for, yes, he did help to end the war but so many were killed in the process.

Not only did the bombs affect Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the they affected Feynman as well; on February 15th 1988 Feynman died of a rare cancer, aged 69. Feynman had two rare forms of cancer, liposarcoma* and Waldenstrom`s macroglobulinemia**, dying shortly after a final attempt at surgery. His final words were “I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”.

During his lifetime Feynman had been awarded the Nobel prize and had ended a world war, he was a remarkable man.

Click here to get more information about Richard Feynman on Wikipedia.

*A large bulky tumor that usually occurs in the thigh

**Waldenstrom`s macroglobulinemia is a cancer affecting B cells, a type of white blood cell


7 thoughts on “Richard Feynman: the man who helped end WW2

  1. This excellent blog made me remember Frederick Sanger who died recently. He was the only Englishman to receive two Nobel Prizes, I believe. Do you know anything about him?

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