Ebook rtf mathematics Feynman, Richard Surely You’…

Alfred Nobel's Other Mistake
. 
For many years I would look, when the time was coming around to give out the Prize, at who might get it. But after a while I wasn't even aware 
of when it was the right "season." I therefore had no idea why someone would be calling me at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. 
"Professor Feynman?" 
"Hey! Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?" 
"I thought you'd like to know that you've won the Nobel Prize." 
"Yeah, but I'm 
sleeping!
It would have been better if you had called me in the morning."--and I hung up. 
My wife said, "Who was that?" 
"They told me I won the Nobel Prize." 
"Oh, Richard, who
 was
it?" I often kid around and she is so smart that she never gets fooled, but this time I caught her. 
The phone rings again: "Professor Feynman, have you heard . . ." 
(In a disappointed voice) "Yeah." 
Then I began to think, "How can I turn this all off? I don't want any of this!" So the first thing was to take the telephone off the hook, because 
calls were coming one right after the other. I tried to go back to sleep, but found it was impossible. 
I went down to the study to think: What am I going to do? Maybe I won't 
accept
the Prize. What would happen then? Maybe that's impossible. 
I put the receiver back on the hook and the phone rang right away. It was a guy from 
Time
magazine. I said to him, "Listen, I've got a problem, 
so I want this off the record. I don't know how to get out of this thing. Is there some way not to accept the Prize?" 

---

He said, "I'm afraid, sir, that there isn't any way you can do it without making more of a fuss than if you leave it alone." It was obvious. We had 
quite a conversation, about fifteen or twenty minutes, and the 
Time
guy never published anything about it. 
I said thank you very much to the 
Time
guy and hung up. The phone rang immediately: it was the newspaper. 
"Yes, you can come up to the house. Yes, it's all right. Yes, Yes, Yes . . ." 
One of the phone calls was a guy from the Swedish consulate. He was going to have a reception in Los Angeles. 
I figured that since I decided to accept the Prize, I've got to go through with all this stuff. 
The consul said, "Make a list of the people you would like to invite, and we'll make a list of the people we are inviting. Then I'll come to your 
office and we'll compare the lists to see if there are any duplicates, and we'll make up the invitations . . ." 
So I made up my list. It had about eight people-my neighbor from across the street, my artist friend Zorthian, and so on. 
The consul came over to my office with 
his
list: the Governor of the State of California, the This, the That; Getty, the oilman; some actress--it 
had three hundred people! And, needless to say, there was 
no
duplication whatsoever! 
Then I began to get a little bit nervous. The idea of meeting all these dignitaries frightened me. 
The consul saw I was worried. "Oh, don't worry," he said. "Most of them don't come." 
Well, I had never arranged a party that I invit ed people to, and knew to expect them 
not
to come! I don't have to kowtow to anybody and give 
them the delight of being honored with this invitation that they can refuse; it's stupid! 
By the time I got home I was really upset with the whole thing. I called the consul back and said, "I've thought it over, and I realize that I just 
can't go through with the reception." 
He was delighted. He said, "You're perfectly right." I think he was in the same position--having to set up a party for this jerk was just a pain in 
the ass, It turned out, in the end, everybody was happy. Nobody wanted to come, including the guest of honor! The host was much better off, too! 
I had a certain psychological difficulty all the way through this period. You see, I had been brought up by my father against royalty and pomp 
(he was in the uniforms business, so he knew the difference between a man with a uniform on, and with the uniform off--it's the same man). I had 
actually learned to ridicule this stuff all my life, and it was so strong and deeply cut into me that I couldn't go up to a king without some strain. It was 
childish, I know, hut I was brought up that way, so it was a problem. 
People told me that there was a rule in Sweden that after you accept the Prize, you have to back away from the king without turning around. You 
come down some steps, accept the Prize, and then go back up the steps. So I said to myself, "All right, I'm gonna fix them!"--and I practiced 
jumping
up stairs, backwards, to show how ridiculous their custom was. I was in a terrible mood! That was stupid and silly, of course. 
I found out this wasn't a rule any more; you could turn around when you left the king, and walk like a normal human being, in the direction you 
were intending to go, with your nose in front. 
I was pleased to find that not all the people in Sweden take the royal ceremonies as seriously as you! might think. When you get there, you 
discover that they're on your side. 
The students had, for example, a special ceremony in which they granted each Nobel-Prize-winner the special "Order of the Frog." When you get 
this little frog, you have to make a frog noise. 
When I was younger I was anti-culture, but my father had some good books around. One was a book with the old Greek play