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permission
to have the ambassador sit next to Mr. Sholokhov. It was finally agreed that the ambassador wouldn't officially represent the embassy of the Soviet
Union that evening; rather, he was to he only the translator for Mr. Sholokhov."
After the dinner we went off into another room, where there were different conversations going on. There was a Princess Somebody of Denmark
sitting at a table with a number of people around her, and I saw an empty chair at their table and sat down.
She turned to me and said, "Oh! You're one of the Nobel-Prize-winners. In what field did you do your work?"
"In physics," I said.
"Oh. Well, nobody knows anything about that, so I guess we can't talk about it."
"On the contrary," I answered. "It's because somebody knows
something
about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody
knows anything about that we
can
discuss. We can talk about the weather; we can talk about social problems; we can talk about psychology; we can
talk about international finance--gold transfers we
can't
talk about, because those are understood--so it's the subject that nobody knows anything
about that we can all talk about!"
I don't know how they do it. There's a way of forming
ice
on the surface of the face, and she
did
it! She turned to talk to somebody else.
After a while I could tell I was completely cut out of the conversation, so I got up and started away. The Japanese ambassador, who was also
sitting at that table, jumped up and walked after me. "Professor Feynman," he said, "there is something I should like to tell you about diplomacy."
He went into a long story about how a young man in Japan goes to the university and studies international relations because he thinks he can
make a contribution to his country. As a sophomore he begins to have slight twinges of doubt about what he is learning. After college he takes his
first post in an embassy and has still more doubts about his understanding of diplomacy, until he finally realizes that
nobody
knows anything about
international relations. At that point, he can become an ambassador! "So Professor Feynman," he said, "next time you give examples of things that
everybody talks about that nobody knows about, please include international relations!"
He was a very interesting man, and we got to talking. I had always been interested in how it is the different countries and different peoples
develop differently. I told the ambassador that there was one thing that always seemed to me to be a remarkable phenomenon: how Japan had
developed itself so rapidly to become such a modern and important country in the world. "What is the aspect and character of the Japanese people
that made it possible for the Japanese to do that?" I asked.
The ambassador answered in a way I like to hear: "I don't know," he said. "I might suppose something, but I don't know if it's true. The people of
Japan believed they had only one way of moving up: to have their children educated more than they were; that it was very important for them to
move out of their peasantry to become educated. So there has been a great energy in the family to encourage the children to do well in school, and to
be pushed forward. Because of this tendency to learn things all the time, new ideas from the outside would spread through the educational system
very easily. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Japan has advanced so rapidly."
All in all, I must say I enjoyed the visit to Sweden, in the end. Instead of coming home immediately, I went to CERN, the European center for
nuclear research in Switzerland, to give a talk. I appeared before my colleagues in the suit that I had worn to the King's Dinner--I had never given a
talk in a suit before--and I began by saying, "Funny thing, you know; in Sweden we were sitting around, talking about whether there are any changes
as a result of our having won the Nobel Prize, and as a matter of fact, I think I already see a change: I rather like this suit."
Everybody says "Booooo!" and Weisskopf jumps up and tears off his coat and says, "We're not gonna wear suits at lectures!"
I took my coat off, loosened my tie, and said, "By the time I had been through Sweden, I was beginning to
like
this stuff, but now that I'm back in
the world, everything's all right again. Thanks for straightening me out!" They didn't want me to change. So it was very quick: at CERN they undid
everything that they had done in Sweden.
It's nice that I got some money--I was able to buy a beach house--but altogether, I think it would have been much nicer not to have had the Prize-
-because you never, any longer, can be taken straightforwardly in any public situation.
In a way, the Nobel Prize has been something of a pain in the neck, though there was at least one time that I got some fun out of it, Shortly after I
won the Prize, Gweneth and I received an invitation from the Brazilian government to be the guests of honor at the Carnaval celebrations in Rio. We
gladly accepted and had a great time. We went from one dance to another and reviewed the big street parade that featured the famous samba schools
playing their wonderful rhythms and music. Photographers from newspapers and magazines were taking pictures all the time--"Here, the Professor
from America is dancing with Miss Brazil."
It was fun to be a "celebrity," hut we were obviously the wrong celebrities. Nobody was very excited about the guests of honor that year. I found
out later how our invitation had come about. Gina Lollobrigida was supposed to he the guest of honor, but just before Carnaval, she said no. The
Minister of Tourism, who was in charge of organizing Carnaval, had some friends at the Center for Physical Research who knew I had played in a
samba band, and since I had recently won the Nobel Prize, I was briefly in the news, In a moment of panic the Minister and his friends got this crazy
idea to replace Gina Lollobrigida with the professor of physics!
Needless to say, the Minister did such a bad job on that Carnaval that he lost his position in the government.
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