We’ve all grown up hearing our parents reminisce about the miracles of several scientists. Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Bose, you name it. One unique, vivid life, however, was that of Richard Feynman. While this eccentric genius won the Nobel Prize for his work in Quantum Physics, his playful personality really stood out! His resilient persona was undaunted by the circumstances or situations he was in; if he wanted to play a prank, it didn’t matter who was on the receiving end!
Even Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, Edward Teller, wasn’t spared! Feynman complained that highly-sensitive documents were left unsecured when the two were working together on Project Manhattan. To illustrate his point, he actually sneaked out between a meeting and slipped out his documents – he didn’t even have to pick the lock! Towards the meeting’s end, they revisited the security of their papers.
Despite specialising in MIT Science, Feynman’s interests spawned across various subjects, including Philosophy! Indifferent to his professor’s classes, Feynman scribbled a verse to confuse everyone:
I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!
Even besides his prankster nature, Feynman was a physicist par excellence. He would simplify even the most complex physics problems into effortless statements. He debunked the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster by conducting a simple experiment – dipping a piece of the rubber seal from the shuttle in ice water. What could potentially have been an hour-long lecture about the effects of temperature and pressure on different materials, Feynman summarised in one sentence.
With his flamboyant and playful personality, Feynman shattered the stereotype of a serious, socially-awkward, and straight-jacketed physicist.
On the other hand, Satyendra Nath Bose was the embodiment of this stereotype. He worked with Einstein to develop the Bose-Einstein statistics and even solved a problem Niels Bohr struggled with within seconds! He once scored 110 out of 100 in a test because he solved each question correctly – and in multiple methods, his university records are yet to be beaten.
Unfortunately, people did not appreciate his work to the extent it should have been. At the time, Indian scientists weren’t taken as seriously, so his paper was rejected when he submitted it to a prestigious journal in London. However, when he sent the same paper to Einstein, the latter found it revolutionary, immediately getting it published in the German journal Zeitschrift fur Physik. With his article finally published and praised by Einstein, Bose soon became a household name.
Bose also catalysed the spread of science in vernacular languages in India – such as his mother tongue Bengali. He believed that science fundamentals must be taught familiarly for India to develop as a country. Thus, he started the science magazine Jnan o Bijnan – a first in an Indian vernacular language.
While their personalities were as divergent as a ray of light emanating from a concave lens, their ultimate objective – exploring the unknown frontiers of science – always converged! If you think that Feynman and Bose differed in every aspect except science, you’re mistaken. You can easily notice the typical scientist’s thirst to constantly learn, especially as the two liked to dabble in multiple subjects – philosophy, literature, music, and more! While this has not been confirmed, there is a possibility that Feynman and Bose met since both had worked with pioneers in physics like Einstein and Bohr, and wouldn’t that have been one revolutionary interaction?
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