Rebecca Mackinnon is promoting Valentine sonnets. I’m not posting my efforts–Joho’s will beat everyone for humor if not for love–but, speaking of Valentines and love, I love this 1983 picture of Frank Wilczek with legendary physics bad boy R.P. Feynman.
Yes, that’s the Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman Feynman, the Challenger disaster frozen O-Rings Feynman, safe-cracking, bongo-playing, Tuva-loving, 1965-Nobel-Prize-winning, 1918-1988 Richard P. Feynman.
About this photograph–first, roll your mental cameras back even farther, to 1972, the year I met Frank Wilczek. When I think back to those intense happy days, I can remember earnestly playing Bob Dylan records and moving the needle to tracks I thought Frank “should” hear. And I’ll never forget his introducing me to Feynman, by which he meant the tattered red three-volume Lectures in Physics he’d read by himself in high school to learn about physics. He sat me down next to him on some seedy Grad College sofa, put the first volume into my hands, and waited to enjoy the delight I would surely feel as soon as I started reading. These books were an intellectual treasure that he couldn’t wait to share–only later did I find out they were also a part of his personal odyssey–if I hadn’t been in love with him before, I would surely have fallen in love with him right then.
Now–ten-plus years, lots of physics, and two great kids later–we get to 1983. Murph Goldberger sent us this photo of Frank with Feynman at his (Murph’s) 60th birthday bash. No wonder Frank looks happy–even if Feynman is teasing him and our friend Sam Treiman is giving him “devil horn” fingers…
I’ve been hard at work collecting Frank Wilczek photos, which have to go out to a whole bunch of publications. So that and some chocolate will have to make up for my Valentine failure to come up with the really perfect love sonnet….