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Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake
In Canada they have a big association of physics students. They have meetings; they give papers, and so on. One time the Vancouver chapter
wanted to have me come and talk to them. The girl in charge of it arranged with my secretary to fly all the way to Los Angeles without telling me.
She just walked into my office. She was really cute, a beautiful blonde. (That helped; it's not supposed to, but it did.) And I was impressed that the
students in Vancouver had financed the whole thing. They treated me so nicely in Vancouver that now I know the secret of how to really be
entertained and give talks: Wait for the students to ask you.
One time, a few years after I had won the Nobel Prize, some kids from the Irvine students' physics club came around and wanted me to talk. I
said, "I'd love to do it. What I want to do is talk just to the physics club. But--I don't want to be immodest--I've learned from experience that there'll
be trouble."
I told them how I used to go over to a local high school every year to talk to the physics club about relativity, or whatever they asked about. Then,
after I got the Prize, I went over there again, as usual, with no preparation, and they stuck me in front of an assembly of three hundred kids. It was a
mess!
I got that shock about three or four times, being an idiot and not catching on right away. When I was invited to Berkeley to give a talk on
something in physics, I prepared something rather technical, expecting to give it to the usual physics department group. But when I got there, this
tremendous lecture hall is
full
of people! And I
know
there's not that many people in Berkeley who know the level at which I prepared my talk. My
problem is, I like to please the people who come to hear me, and I can't do it if everybody and his brother wants to hear: I don't know my audience
then.
After the students understood that I can't just easily go over somewhere and give a talk to the physics club, I said, "Let's cook up a dull-sounding
title and a dull-sounding professor's name, and then only the kids who are really interested in physics will bother to come, and those are the ones we
want, OK? You don't have to sell anything."
A few posters appeared on the Irvine campus: Professor Henry Warren from the University of Washington is going to talk about the structure of
the proton on May 17th at 3:00 in Room D102.
Then I came and said, "Professor Warren had some personal difficulties and was unable to come and speak to you today, so he telephoned me
and asked me if I would talk to you about the subject, since I've been doing some work in the field. So here I am." It worked great.
But then, somehow or other, the faculty adviser of the club found out about the trick, and he got very angry at them. He said, "You know, if it
were known that Professor Feynman was coming down here, a lot of people would like to have listened to him."
The students explained, "That's just
it!
" But the adviser was mad that he hadn't been allowed in on the joke.
Hearing that the students were in real trouble, I decided to write a letter to the adviser and explained that it was all my fault, that I wouldn't have
given the talk unless this arrangement had been made; that I had told the students not to tell anyone; I'm very sorry; please excuse me, blah, blah,
blah . . ." That's the kind of stuff I have to go through on account of that damn prize!
Just last year I was invited by the students at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks to talk, and had a wonderful time, except for the interviews
on local television. I don't need interviews; there's no point to it. I came to talk to the physics students, and that's it. If everybody in town wants to
know that, let the school newspaper tell them. It's on account of the Nobel Prize that I've got to have an interview--I'm a big shot, right?
A friend of mine who's a rich man--he invented some kmd of simple digital switch--tells me about these people who contribute money to make
prizes or give lectures: "You always look at them carefully to find out what crookery they're trying to absolve their conscience of."
My friend Matt Sands was once going to write a book to be called
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