Charles Mann

I don't understand how it subtracts.

John Preskill.

John Preskill.

deeper appreciation than if you just read about it.

That's true.

But, you know, all those other guys and gals who've been writing all these papers and books, they're not so dumb.

And they know some things that maybe you should know, too.

So sometimes I felt, you know, he put a little too much emphasis on you got to work it out yourself.

But that was very much part of his credo.

You know, by the time I knew Feynman,

I came to Caltech in 1983, and he died four and a half years later.

And I don't think he was the Feynman of legend.

He was still extraordinary in terms of, you know, the depth of curiosity.

And he still had the charisma and, of course, a great storyteller.

But maybe he wasn't as great a physicist as he might have been.

It wasn't the kind of hierarchy of where you had to know your place.

The point was everybody's place was to say anything they wanted to anybody else.

I never knew who I was talking to.

I would only worry about the physics.

If the idea looked lousy, I said it looked lousy.