I had a brief exchange with Feynman. I’d read some comments of his that dissed the Nobel prize people and took him to task for being an ingrate. I remember writing, “You think think you’re a curmudgeon, but you’re just a jerk.” He wrote a disarming letter back, saying he’d been grouchy at being awakened in the middle of the night with The Call and said people in Sweden had been very kind blah, blah, blah.

Wolfram’s extensive experience — actually a relationship — with Feynman, and my brief acquaintance, are in agreement. What sums up the man best is, to me, Feynman’s greatest moment, when he was on the Challenger commission. Not content with the script, Feynman went off on his own, snooping around. The suits were pretty upset and tried to rein him in, but not before Feynman had cut through the crap, to the heart of what caused Challenger to crash.

I think Richard Feynman’s attitude towards physics is like that of those Cambridge mathematicians, like Hardy, who have little interest in the practical side. They are æstheticians who see their work as making problems make sense.