ess me, he's willing to buy
this for me. If I'm ever going to tell the story..." So I said to him,
"Well, OK, introduce me."
We went over to their table and he introduced me to the girls and then
went off for a moment. A waitress came around and asked us what we wanted to
drink. I ordered some water, and the girl next to me said, "Is it all right
if I have a champagne?"
"You can have whatever you want," I replied, coolly, " 'cause you're
payin' for it."
"What's the matter with you?" she said. "Cheapskate, or something?"
"That's right."
"You're certainly not a gentleman!" she said indignantly.
"You figured me out immediately!" I replied. I had learned in New
Mexico many years before not to be a gentleman.
Pretty soon they were offering to buy me drinks -- the tables were
turned completely! (By the way, the Texas oilman never came back.)
After a while, one of the girls said, "Let's go over to the El Rancho.
Maybe things are livelier over there." We got in their car. It was a nice
car, and they were nice people. On the way, they asked me my name.
"Dick Feynman."
"Where are you from, Dick? What do you do?"
"I'm from Pasadena; I work at Caltech."
One of the girls said, "Oh, isn't that the place where that scientist
Pauling comes from?"
I had been in Las Vegas many times, over and over, and there was nobody
who ever knew anything about science. I had talked to businessmen of all
kinds, and to them, a scientist was a nobody. "Yeah!" I said, astonished.
"And there's a fella named Gellan, or something like that -- a
physicist." I couldn't believe it. I was riding in a car full of prostitutes
and they know all this stuff!
"Yeah! His name is Gell-Mann! How did you happen to know that?"
"Your pictures were in Time magazine." It's true, they had pictures
often U.S. scientists in Time magazine, for some reason. I was in it, and so
were Pauling and Gell-Mann.
"How did you remember the names?" I asked.
"Well, we were looking through the pictures, and we picked out the
youngest and the handsomest!" (Gell-Mann is younger than I am.)
We got to the El Rancho Hotel and the girls continued this game of
acting towards me like everybody normally acts towards them: "Would you like
to gamble?" they asked. I gambled a little bit with their money and we all
had a good time.
After a while they said, "Look, we see a live one, so we'll have to
leave you now," and they went back to work.
One time I was sitting at a bar and I noticed two girls with an older
man. Finally he walked away, and they came over and sat next to me: the
prettier and more active one next to me, and her duller friend, named Pam,
on the other side.
Things started going along very nicely right away. She was very
friendly. Soon she was leaning against me, and I put my arm around her. Two
men came in and sat at a table nearby. Then, before the waitress came, they
walked out.
"Did you see those men?" my new-found friend said.
"Yeah."
"They're friends of my husband."
"Oh? What is this?"
"You see, I just married John Big" -- she mentioned a very famous name
-- "and we've had a little argument. We're on our honeymoon, and John is
always gambling. He doesn't pay any attention to me, so I go off and enjoy
myself, but he keeps sending spies around to check on what I'm doing."
She asked me to take her to her motel room, so we went in my car. On
the way I asked her, "Well, what about John?"
She said, "Don't worry. Just look around for a big red car with two
antennas. If you don't see it, he's not around."
The next night I took the "Gibson girl" and a friend of hers to the
late show at the Silver Slipper, which had a show later than all the hotels.
The girls who worked in the other shows liked to go there, and the master of
ceremonies announced the arrival of the various dancers as they came in. So
in I went with these two lovely dancers on my arm, and he said, "And here
comes Miss So-and-so and Miss So-and-so from the Flamingo!" Everybody looked
around to see who was coming in. I felt great!
We sat down at a table near the bar, and after a little while there was
a bit of a flurry-waiters moving tables around, security guards, with guns,
coming in. They were making room for a celebrity. JOHN BIG was coming in!
He came over to the bar, right next to our table, and right away two
guys wanted to dance with the girls I brought. They went off to dance, and I
was sitting alone at the table when John came over and sat down at my table.
"How are yah?" he said. "Whattya doin' in Vegas?"
I was sure he'd found out about me and his wife. "Just foolin'
around..." (I've gotta act tough, right?)
"How long ya been here?"
"Four or five nights."
"I know ya," he said. "Didn't I see you in Florida?"
"Well, I really don't know..."
He tried this place and that place, and I didn't know what he was
getting at. "I know," he said; "It was in El Morocco." (El Morocco was a big
nightclub in New York, where a lot of big operators go -- like professors of
theoretical physics, right?)
"That must have been it," I said. I was wondering when he was going to
get to it. Finally he leaned over to me and said, "Hey, will you introduce
me to those girls you're with when they come back from dancing?"
That's all he wanted; he didn't know me from a hole in the wall! So I
introduced him, but my show girl friends said they were tired and wanted to
go home.
The next afternoon, I saw John Big at the Flamingo, standing at the
bar, talking to the bartender about cameras and taking pictures. He must be
an amateur photographer: He's got all these bulbs and cameras, but he says
the dumbest things about them. I decided he wasn't an amateur photographer
after all; he was just a rich guy who bought himself some cameras.
I figured by that time that he didn't know I had been fooling around
with his wife; he only wanted to talk to me because of the girls I had. So I
thought I would play a game. I'd invent a part for myself: John Big's
assistant.
"Hi, John," I said. "Let's take some pictures. I'll carry your
flashbulbs."
I put the flashbulbs in my pocket, and we started off taking pictures.
I'd hand him flashbulbs and give him advice here and there; he likes that
stuff.
We went over to the Last Frontier to gamble, and he started to win. The
hotels don't like a high roller to leave, but I could see he wanted to go.
The problem was how to do it gracefully.
"John, we have to leave now," I said in a serious voice.
"But I'm winning."
"Yes, but we have made an appointment this afternoon."
"OK, get my car."
"Certainly, Mr. Big!" He handed me the keys and told me what it looked
like (I didn't let on that I knew).
I went out to the parking lot, and sure enough, there was this big,
fat, wonderful car with the two antennas. I climbed into it and turned the
key -- and it wouldn't start. It had an automatic transmission; they had
just come out and I didn't know anything about them. After a bit I
accidentally shifted it into PARK and it started. I drove it very carefully,
like a million-dollar car, to the hotel entrance, where I got out and went
inside to the table where he was still gambling, and said, "Your car is
ready, sir!"
"I have to quit," he announced, and we left. He had me drive the car.
"I want to go to the El Rancho," he said. "Do you know any girls there?"
I knew one girl there rather well, so I said "Yeah." By this time I
felt confident enough that the only reason he was going along with this game
I had invented was that he wanted to meet some girls, so I brought up a
delicate subject: "I met your wife the other night..."
"My wife? My wife's not here in Las Vegas." I told him about the girl I
met in the bar. "Oh! I know who you mean; I met that girl and her friend in
Los Angeles and brought them to Las Vegas. The first thing they did was use
my phone for an hour to talk to their friends in Texas. I got mad and threw
'em out! So she's been going around telling everybody that she's my wife,
eh?" So that was cleared up.
We went into the El Rancho, and the show was going to start in about
fifteen minutes. The place was packed; there wasn't a seat in the house.
John went over to the majordomo and said, "I want a table."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Big! It will be ready in a few minutes." John tipped him
and went off to gamble. Meanwhile I went around to the back, where the girls
were getting ready for the show, and asked for my friend. She came out and I
explained to her that John Big was with me, and he'd like some company after
the show.
"Certainly, Dick," she said. "I'll bring some friends and we'll see you
after the show."
I went around to the front to find John. He was still gambling. "Just
go in without me," he said. "I'll be there in a minute."
There were two tables, at the very front, right at the edge of the
stage. Every other table in the place was packed. I sat down by myself. The
show started before John came in, and the show girls came out. They could
see me at the table, all by myself. Before, they thought I was some
small-time professor; now they see I'm a BIG OPERATOR.
Finally John came in, and soon afterwards some people sat down at the
table next to us -- John's "wife" and her friend Pam, with two men!
I leaned over to John: "She's at the other table."
"Yeah."
She saw I was taking care of John, so she leaned over to me from the
other table and asked, "Could I talk to John?"
I didn't say a word. John didn't say anything either.
I waited a little while, then I leaned over to John: "She wants to talk
to you."
Then he waited a little bit. "All right," he said.
I waited a little more, and then I leaned over to her: "John will speak
to you now."
She came over to our table. She started working on "Johnnie," sitting
very close to him. Things were beginning to get straightened out a little
bit, I could tell.
I love to be mischievous, so every time they got things straightened
out a little bit, I reminded John of something: "The telephone, John..."
"Yeah!" he said. "What's the idea, spending an hour on the telephone?"
She said it was Pam who did the calling.
Things improved a little bit more, so I pointed out that it was her
idea to bring Pam.
"Yeah!" he said. (I was having a great time playing this game; it went
on for quite a while.)
When the show was over, the girls from the El Rancho came over to our
table and we talked to them until they had to go back for the next show.
Then John said, "I know a nice little bar not too far away from here. Let's
go over there."
I drove him over to the bar and we went in. "See that woman over
there?" he said. "She's a really good lawyer. Come on, I'll introduce you to
her."
John introduced us and excused himself to go to the restroom. He never
came back. I think he wanted to get back with his "wife" and I was beginning
to interfere.
I said, "Hi" to the woman and ordered a drink for myself (still playing
this game of not being impressed and not being a gentleman).
"You know," she said to me, "I'm one of the better lawyers here in Las
Vegas."
"Oh, no, you're not," I replied coolly. "You might be a lawyer during
the day, but you know what you are right now? You're just a barfly in a
small bar in Vegas."
She liked me, and we went to a few places dancing. She danced very
well, and I love to dance, so we had a great time together.
Then, all of a sudden in the middle of a dance, my back began to hurt.
It was some kind of big pain, and it started suddenly. I know now what it
was: I had been up for three days and nights having these crazy adventures,
and I was completely exhausted.
She said she would take me home. As soon as I got into her bed I went
BONGO! I was out.
The next morning I woke up in this beautiful bed. The sun was shining,
and there was no sign of her. Instead, there was a maid. "Sir," she said,
"are you awake? I'm ready with breakfast."
"Well, uh..."
"I'll bring it to you. What would you like?" and she went through a
whole menu of breakfasts.
I ordered breakfast and had it in bed -- in the bed of a woman I didn't
know; I didn't know who she was or where she came from!
I asked the maid a few questions, and she didn't know anything about
this mysterious woman either: She had just been hired, and it was her first
day on the job. She thought I was the man of the house, and found it curious
that I was asking her questions. I got dressed, finally, and left. I never
saw the mysterious woman again.
The first time I was in Las Vegas I sat down and figured out the odds
for everything, and I discovered that the odds for the crap table were
something like .493. If I bet a dollar, it would only cost me 1.4 cents. So
I thought to myself, "Why am I so reluctant to bet? It hardly costs
anything!"
So I started betting, and right away I lost five dollars in succession
-- one, two, three, four, five. I was supposed to be out only seven cents;
instead, I was five dollars behind! I've never gambled since then (with my
own money, that is). I'm very lucky that I started off losing.
One time I was eating lunch with one of the show girls. It was a quiet
time in the afternoon; there was not the usual big bustle, and she said,
"See that man over there, walking across the lawn? That's Nick the Greek.
He's a professional gambler."
Now I knew damn well what all the odds were in Las Vegas, so I said,
"How can he be a professional gambler?"
"I'll call him over."
Nick came over and she introduced us. "Marilyn tells me that you're a
professional gambler."
"That's correct."
"Well, I'd like to know how it's possible to make your living gambling,
because at the table, the odds are .493."
"You're right," he said, "and I'll explain it to you. I don't bet on
the table, or things like that. I only bet when the odds are in my favor."
"Huh? When are the odds ever in your favor?" I asked incredulously.
"It's really quite easy," he said. "I'm standing around a table, when
some guy says, 'It's comin' out nine! It's gotta be a nine!' The guy's
excited; he thinks it's going to be a nine, and he wants to bet. Now I know
the odds for all the numbers inside out, so I say to him, 'I'll bet you four
to three it's not a nine,' and I win in the long run. I don't bet on the
table; instead, I bet with people around the table who have prejudices --
superstitious ideas about lucky numbers."
Nick continued: "Now that I've got a reputation, it's even easier,
because people will bet with me even when they know the odds aren't very
good, just to have the chance of telling the story, if they win, of how they
beat Nick the Greek. So I really do make a living gambling, and it's
wonderful!"
So Nick the Greek was really an educated character. He was a very nice
and engaging man. I thanked him for the explanation; now I understood it. I
have to understand the world, you see.
--------
An Offer You Must Refuse
Cornell had all kinds of departments that I didn't have much interest
in. (That doesn't mean there was anything wrong with them; it's just that I
didn't happen to have much interest in them.) There was domestic science,
philosophy (the guys from this department were particularly inane), and
there were the cultural things -- music and so on. There were quite a few
people I did enjoy talking to, of course. In the math department there was
Professor Kac and Professor Feller; in chemistry, Professor Calvin; and a
great guy in the zoology department, Dr. Griffin, who found out that bats
navigate by making echoes. But it was hard to find enough of these guys to
talk to, and there was all this other stuff which I thought was low-level
baloney. And Ithaca was a small town.
The weather wasn't really very good. One day I was driving in the car,
and there came one of those quick snow flurries that you don't expect, so
you're not ready for it, and you figure, "Oh, it isn't going to amount to
much; I'll keep on going."
But then the snow gets deep enough that the car begins to skid a little
bit, so you have to put the chains on. You get out of the car, put the
chains out on the snow, and it's cold, and you're beginning to shiver. Then
you roll the car back onto the chains, and you have this problem -- or we
had it in those days; I don't know what there is now -- that there's a hook
on the inside that you have to hook first. And because the chains have to go
on pretty tight, it's hard to get the hook to hook. Then you have to push
this clamp down with your fingers, which by this time are nearly frozen. And
because you're on the outside of the tire, and the hook is on the inside,
and your hands are cold, it's very difficult to control. It keeps slipping,
and it's cold, and the snow's coming down, and you're trying to push this
clamp, and your hand's hurting, and the damn thing's not going down -- well,
I remember that that was the moment when I decided that this is insane;
there must be a part of the world that doesn't have this problem.
I remembered the couple of times I had visited Caltech, at the
invitation of Professor Bacher, who had previously been at Cornell. He was
very smart when I visited. He knew me inside out, so he said, "Feynman, I
have this extra car, which I'm gonna lend you. Now here's how you go to
Hollywood and the Sunset Strip. Enjoy yourself."
So I drove his car every night down to the Sunset Strip -- to the
nightclubs and the bars and the action. It was the kind of stuff I liked
from Las Vegas -- pretty girls, big operators, and so on. So Bacher knew how
to get me interested in Caltech.
You know the story about the donkey who is standing exactly in the
middle of two piles of hay, and doesn't go to either one, because it's
balanced? Well, that's nothing. Cornell and Caltech started making me
offers, and as soon as I would move, figuring that Caltech was really
better, they would up their offer at Cornell; and when I thought I'd stay at
Cornell, they'd up something at Caltech. So you can imagine this donkey
between the two piles of hay, with the extra complication that as soon as he
moves toward one, the other one gets higher. That makes it very difficult!
The argument that finally convinced me was my sabbatical leave. I
wanted to go to Brazil again, this time for ten months, and I had just
earned my sabbatical leave from Cornell. I didn't want to lose that, so now
that I had invented a reason to come to a decision, I wrote Bacher and told
him what I had decided.
Caltech wrote back: "We'll hire you immediately, and we'll give you
your first year as a sabbatical year." That's the way they were acting: no
matter what I decided to do, they'd screw it up. So my first year at Caltech
was really spent in Brazil. I came to Caltech to teach on my second year.
That's how it happened.
Now that I have been at Caltech since 1951, I've been very happy here.
It's exactly the thing for a one-sided guy like me. There are all these
people who are close to the top, who are very interested in what they are
doing, and who I can talk to. So I've been very comfortable.
But one day, when I hadn't been at Caltech very long, we had a bad
attack of smog. It was worse then than it is now -- at least your eyes
smarted much more. I was standing on a corner, and my eyes were watering,
and I thought to myself, "This is crazy! This is absolutely INSANE! It was
all right back at Cornell. I'm getting out of here."
So I called up Cornell, and asked them if they thought it was possible
for me to come back. They said, "Sure! We'll set it up and call you back
tomorrow."
The next day, I had the greatest luck in making a decision. God must
have set it up to help me decide. I was walking to my office, and a guy came
running up to me and said, "Hey, Feynman! Did you hear what happened? Baade
found that there are two different populations of stars! All the
measurements we had been making of the distances to the galaxies had been
based on Cephid variables of one type, but there's another type, so the
universe is twice, or three, or even four times as old as we thought!"
I knew the problem. In those days, the earth appeared to be older than
the universe. The earth was four and a half billion, and the universe was
only a couple, or three billion years old. It was a great puzzle. And this
discovery resolved all that: The universe was now demonstrably older than
was previously thought. And I got this information right away -- the guy
came running up to me to tell me all this.
I didn't even make it across the campus to get to my office, when
another guy came up -- Matt Meselson, a biologist who had minored in
physics. (I had been on his committee for his Ph.D.) He had built the first
of what they call a density gradient centrifuge -- it could measure the
density of molecules. He said, "Look at the results of the experiment I've
been doing!"
He had proved that when a bacterium makes a new one, there's a whole
molecule, intact, which is passed from one bacterium to another -- a
molecule we now know as DNA. You see, we always think of everything
dividing, dividing. So we think everything in the bacterium divides and
gives half of it to the new bacterium. But that's impossible: Somewhere, the
smallest molecule that contains genetic information can't divide in half; it
has to make a copy of itself, and send one copy to the new bacterium, and
keep one copy for the old one. And he had proved it in this way: He first
grew the bacteria in heavy nitrogen, and later grew them all in ordinary
nitrogen. As he went along, he weighed the molecules in his density gradient
centrifuge.
The first generation of new bacteria had all of their chromosome
molecules at a weight exactly in between the weight of molecules made with
heavy, and molecules made with ordinary, nitrogen -- a result that could
occur if everything divided, including the chromosome molecules.
But in succeeding generations, when one might expect that the weight of
the chromosome molecules would be one-fourth, one-eighth, and one-sixteenth
of the difference between the heavy and ordinary molecules, the weights of
the molecules fell into only two groups. One group was the same weight as
the first new generation (halfway between the heavier and the lighter
molecules), and the other group was lighter -- the weight of molecules made
in ordinary nitrogen. The percentage of heavier molecules was cut in half in
each succeeding generation, but not their weights. That was tremendously
exciting, and very important -- it was a fundamental discovery. And I
realized, as I finally got to my office, that this is where I've got to be.
Where people from all different fields of science would tell me stuff, and
it was all exciting. It was exactly what I wanted, really.
So when Cornell called a little later, and said they were setting
everything up, and it was nearly ready, I said, "I'm sorry, I've changed my
mind again." But I decided then never to decide again. Nothing -- absolutely
nothing -- would ever change my mind again.
When you're young, you have all these things to worry about -- should
you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but
then something else comes up. It's much easier to just plain decide. Never
mind -- nothing is going to change your mind. I did that once when I was a
student at MIT. I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of
dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always
be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again -- I had the
solution to that problem. Anyway, I decided it would always be Caltech.
One time someone tried to change my mind about Caltech. Fermi had just
died a short time before, and the faculty at Chicago were looking for
someone to take his place. Two people from Chicago came out and asked to
visit me at my home -- I didn't know what it was about. They began telling
me all the good reasons why I ought to go to Chicago: I could do this, I
could do that, they had lots of great people there, I had the opportunity to
do all kinds of wonderful things. I didn't ask them how much they would pay,
and they kept hinting that they would tell me if I asked. Finally, they
asked me if I wanted to know the salary. "Oh, no!" I said. "I've already
decided to stay at Caltech. My wife Mary Lou is in the other room, and if
she hears how much the salary is, we'll get into an argument. Besides, I've
decided not to decide any more; I'm staying at Caltech for good." So I
didn't let them tell me the salary they were offering.
About a month later I was at a meeting, and Leona Marshall came over
and said, "It's funny you didn't accept our offer at Chicago. We were so
disappointed, and we couldn't understand how you could turn down such a
terrific offer."
"It was easy," I said, "because I never let them tell me what the offer
was."
A week later I got a letter from her. I opened it, and the first
sentence said, "The salary they were offering was--," a tremendous amount of
money, three or four times what I was making. Staggering! Her letter
continued, "I told you the salary before you could read any further. Maybe
now you want to reconsider, because they've told me the position is still
open, and we'd very much like to have you."
So I wrote them back a letter that said, "After reading the salary,
I've decided that I must refuse. The reason I have to refuse a salary like
that is I would be able to do what I've always wanted to do -- get a
wonderful mistress, put her up in an apartment, buy her nice things... With
the salary you have offered, I could actually do that, and I know what would
happen to me. I'd worry about her, what she's doing; I'd get into arguments
when I come home, and so on. All this bother would make me uncomfortable and
unhappy. I wouldn't be able to do physics well, and it would be a big mess!
What I've always wanted to do would be bad for me, so I've decided that I
can't accept your offer."
--------
Part 5
The World of One Physicist
--------
Would You Solve the Dirac Equation?
Near the end of the year I was in Brazil I received a letter from
Professor Wheeler which said that there was going to be an international
meeting of theoretical physicists in Japan, and might I like to go? Japan
had some famous physicists before the war -- Professor Yukawa, with a Nobel
prize, Tomonaga, and Nishina -- but this was the first sign of Japan coming
back to life after the war, and we all thought we ought to go and help them
along.
Wheeler enclosed an army phrasebook and wrote that it would be nice if
we would all learn a little Japanese. I found a Japanese woman in Brazil to
help me with the pronunciation, I practiced lifting little pieces of paper
with chopsticks, and I read a lot about Japan. At that time, Japan was very
mysterious to me, and I thought it would be interesting to go to such a
strange and wonderful country, so I worked very hard.
When we got there, we were met at the airport and taken to a hotel in
Tokyo designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was an imitation of a European
hotel, right down to the little guy dressed in an outfit like the Philip
Morris guy. We weren't in Japan; we might as well have been in Europe or
America! The guy who showed us to our rooms stalled around, pulling the
shades up and down, waiting for a tip. Everything was just like America.
Our hosts had everything organized. That first night we were served
dinner up at the top of the hotel by a woman dressed Japanese, but the menus
were in English. I had gone to a lot of trouble to learn a few phrases in
Japanese, so near the end of the meal, I said to the waitress, "Kohi-o motte
kite kudasai." She bowed and walked away.
My friend Marshak did a double take: "What? What?"
"I talk Japanese," I said,
"Oh, you faker! You're always kidding around, Feynman."
"What are you talkin' about?" I said, in a serious tone.
"OK," he said. "What did you ask?"
"I asked her to bring us coffee."
Marshak didn't believe me. "I'll make a bet with you," he said. "If she
brings us coffee..."
The waitress appeared with our coffee, and Marshak lost his bet.
It turned out I was the only guy who had learned some Japanese -- even
Wheeler, who had told everybody they ought to learn Japanese, hadn't learned
any -- and I couldn't stand it any more. I had read about the Japanese-style
hotels, which were supposed to be very different from the hotel we were
staying in.
The next morning I called the Japanese guy who was organizing
everything up to my room. "I would like to stay in a Japanese-style hotel."
"I am afraid that it is impossible, Professor Feynman."
I had read that the Japanese are very polite, but very obstinate: You
have to keep working on them. So I decided to be as obstinate as they, and
equally polite. It was a battle of minds: It took thirty minutes, back and
forth.
"Why do you want to go to a Japanese-style hotel?"
"Because in this hotel, I don't feel like I'm in Japan."
"Japanese-style hotels are no good. You have to sleep on the floor."
"That's what I want; I want to see how it is."
"And there are no chairs -- you sit on the floor at the table."
"It's OK. That will be delightful. That's what I'm looking for."
Finally he owns up to what the situation is: "If you're in another
hotel, the bus will have to make an extra stop on its way to the meeting."
"No, no!" I say. "In the morning, I'll come to this hotel, and get on
the bus here."
"Well, then, OK. That's fine." That's all there was to it -- except it
took half an hour to get to the real problem.
He's walking over to the telephone to make a call to the other hotel
when suddenly he stops; everything is blocked up again. It takes another
fifteen minutes to discover that this time it's the mail. If there are any
messages from the meeting, they already have it arranged where to deliver
them.
"It's OK," I say. "When I come in the morning to get the bus, I'll look
for any messages for me here at this hotel."
"All right. That's fine." He gets on the telephone and at last we're on
our way to the Japanese-style hotel.
As soon as I got there, I knew it was worth it: It was so lovely! There
was a place at the front where you take your shoes off, then a girl dressed
in the traditional outfit -- the obi -- with sandals comes shuffling out,
and takes your stuff; you follow her down a hallway which has mats on the
floor, past sliding doors made of paper, and she's going cht-cht-cht-cht
with little steps. It was all very wonderful!
We went into my room and the guy who arranged everything got all the
way down, prostrated, and touched his nose to the floor; she got down and
touched her nose to the floor. I felt very awkward. Should I touch my nose
to the floor, too?
They said greetings to each other, he accepted the room for me, and
went out. It was a really wonderful room. There were all the regular,
standard things that you know of now, but it was all new to me. There was a
little alcove with a painting in it, a vase with pussywillows nicely
arranged, a table along the floor with a cushion nearby, and at the end of
the room were two sliding doors which opened onto a garden.
The lady who was supposed to take care of me was a middle-aged woman.
She helped me undress and gave me a yukata, a simple blue and white robe, to
wear at the hotel.
I pushed open the doors and admired the lovely garden, and sat down at
the table to do a little work.
I wasn't there more than fifteen or twenty minutes when something
caught my eye. I looked up, out towards the garden, and I saw, sitting at
the entrance to the door, draped in the corner, a very beautiful young
Japanese woman, in a most lovely outfit.
I had read a lot about the customs of Japan, and I had an idea of why
she was sent to my room. I thought, "This might be very interesting!"
She knew a little English. "Would you rike to see the garden?" she
asked.
I put on the shoes that went with the yukata I was wearing, and we went
out into the garden. She took my arm and showed me everything.
It turned out that because she knew a little English, the hotel manager
thought I would like her to show me the garden -- that's all it was. I was a
bit disappointed, of course, but this was a meeting of cultures, and I knew
it was easy to get the wrong idea.
Sometime later the woman who took care of my room came in and said
something -- in Japanese -- about a bath. I knew that Japanese baths were
interesting and was eager to try it, so I said, "Hai."
I had read that Japanese baths are very complicated. They use a lot of
water that's heated from the outside, and you aren't supposed to get soap
into the bathwater and spoil it for the next guy.
I got up and walked into the lavatory section, where the sink was, and
I could hear some guy in the next section with the door closed, taking a
bath. Suddenly the door slides open: the man taking the bath looks to see
who is intruding. "Professor!" he says to me in English. "That's a very bad
error to go into the lavatory when someone else has the bath!" It was
Professor Yukawa!
He told me that the woman had no doubt asked do I want a bath, and if
so, she would get it ready for me and tell me when the bathroom was free.
But of all the people in the world to make that serious social error with, I
was lucky it was Professor Yukawa!
That Japanese-style hotel was delightful, especially when people came
to see me there. The other guys would come in to my room and we'd sit on the
floor and start to talk. We wouldn't be there more than five minutes when
the woman who took care of my room would come in with a tray of candies and
tea. It was as if you were a host in your own home, and the hotel staff was
helping you to entertain your guests. Here, when you have guests at your
hotel room, nobody cares; you have to call up for service, and so on.
Eating meals at the hotel was also different. The girl who brings in
the food stays with you while you eat, so you're not alone. I couldn't have
too good a conversation with her, but it was all right. And the food is
wonderful. For instance, the soup comes in a bowl that's covered. You lift
the cover and there's a beautiful picture: little pieces of onion floating
in the soup just so; it's gorgeous. How the food looks on the plate is very
important.
I had decided that I was going to live Japanese as much as I could.
That meant eating fish. I never liked fish when I was growing up, but I
found out in Japan that it was a childish thing: I ate a lot of fish, and
enjoyed it. (When I went back to the United States the first thing I did was
go to a fish place. It was horrible -- just like it was before. I couldn't
stand it. I later discovered the answer: The fish has to be very, very fresh
-- if it isn't, it gets a certain taste that bothers me.)
One time when I was eating at the Japanese-style hotel I was served a
round, hard thing, about the size of an egg yolk, in a cup of some yellow
liquid. So far I had eaten everything in Japan, but this thing frightened
me: it was all convoluted, like a brain looks. When I asked the girl what it
was, she replied "kuri." That didn't help much. I figured it was probably an
octopus egg, or something. I ate it, with some trepidation, because I wanted
to be as much in Japan as possible. (I also remembered the word "kuri" as if
my life depended on it -- I haven't forgotten it in thirty years:)
The next day I asked a Japanese guy at the conference what this
convoluted thing was. I told him I had found it very difficult to eat. What
the hell was "kuri"?
"It means 'chestnut,' " he replied.
Some of the Japanese I had learned had quite an effect. One time, when
the bus was taking a long time to get started, some guy says, "Hey, Feynman!
You know Japanese; tell 'em to get going!"
I said, "Hayaku! Hayaku! Ikimasho! Ikimasho!" -- which means, "Let's
go! Let's go! Hurry! Hurry!"
I realized my Japanese was out of control. I had learned these phrases
from a military phrase book, and they must have been very rude, because
everyone at the hotel began to scurry like mice, saying, "Yes, sir! Yes
sir!" and the bus left right away.
The meeting in Japan was in two parts: one was in Tokyo, and the other
was in Kyoto. In the bus on the way to Kyoto I told my friend Abraham Pais
about the Japanese-style hotel, and he wanted to try it. We stayed at the
Hotel Miyako, which had both American-style and Japanese-style rooms, and
Pais shared a Japanese-style room with me.
The next morning the young woman taking care of our room fixes the
bath, which was right in our room. Sometime later she returns with a tray to
deliver breakfast. I'm partly dressed. She turns to me and says, politely,
"Ohayo, gozai masu," which means, "Good morning."
Pais is just coming out of the bath, sopping wet and completely nude.
She turns to him and with equal composure says, "Ohayo, gozai masu," and
puts the tray down for us.
Pais looks at me and says, "God, are we uncivilized!" We realized that
in America if the maid was delivering breakfast and the guy's standing
there, stark naked, there would be little screams and a big fuss. But in
Japan they were completely used to it, and we felt that they were much more
advanced and civilized about those things than we were.
I had been working at that time on the theory of liquid helium, and had
figured out how the laws of quantum dynamics explain the strange phenomena
of super-fluidity. I was very proud of this achievement, and was going to
give a talk about my work at the Kyoto meeting.
The night before I gave my talk there was a dinner, and the man who sat
down next to me was none other than Professor Onsager, a topnotch expert in
solid-state physics and the problems of liquid helium. He was one of these
guys who doesn't say very much, but any time he said anything, it was
significant.
"Well, Feynman," he said in a gruff voice, "I hear you think you have
understood liquid helium."
"Well, yes..."
"Hoompf." And that's all he said to me during the whole dinner! So that
wasn't much encouragement.
The next day I gave my talk and explained all about liquid helium. At
the end, I complained that there was still something I hadn't been able to
figure out: that is, whether the transition between one phase and the other
phase of liquid helium was first-order (like when a solid melts or a liquid
boils -- the temperature is constant) or second-order (like you see
sometimes in magnetism, in which the temperature keeps changing).
Then Professor Onsager got up and said in a dour voice, "Well,
Professor Feynman is new in our field, and I think he needs to be educated.
There's something he ought to know, and we should tell him."
I thought, "Geesus! What did I do wrong?"