signed first edition Original Wrappers
1966 · Stockholm
by FEYNMAN, RICHARD P.
Stockholm: The Nobel Foundation, 1966. First Edition. Original Wrappers. EXTREMELY RARE SIGNED FIRST EDITION OFFPRINT OF FEYNMAN’S NOBEL PRIZE LECTURE. Feynman fancied himself a man who could see through the fluff. When asked by the BBC whether his findings deserved a Nobel Prize, Feynman classically responded:
“I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, I don’t believe in honors.”
This attitude—what Feynman himself coined, “a disrespect for the respectable,”—was a product of his upbringing. As a young boy, Feynman’s father, a uniform salesman, would often attempt to teach the young Feynman a lesson, opening a photo in the New York Times and showing Feynman an image of the Pope or a politician, surrounded by bowing admirers. He would then ask Feynman what made the Pope different from the ‘ordinary’ people around him. The answer, his father explained, was in the man's uniform, his title, and his prizes. [Sykes, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”].
This early ‘disrespect for the respectable’ was intertwined with Feynman's approach to knowledge. He detested false certainty: those who used big words without knowing their meanings, or theorized without understanding basic principles. This attitude is reflected in his scientific approach. Colleagues recalled how, when they presented theories to him, Feynman would make them explain their ideas from the ground up. Starting with elementary questions, he would force them to build their arguments from the simplest foundations. Inevitably, at some point, a hole in the theory would appear—revealed by Feynman’s method of thinking from bedrock knowledge [Sykes; Leighton].
Perhaps Feynman disliked awards because he understood them as working as an opposite process: creating differences not on bedrock, but on the basis of status conferred by, what he saw as, detached ceremonies in far off lands.
It’s also difficult to gauge if this attitude was wholly genuine. Feynman was a showman. Stories abound of Feynman’s muted reaction to the Nobel. When awoken by a reporter at 3:00 AM, told of his award, and asked if he was pleased, Feynman responded, “I could have found out later in the morning.” When, at a more reasonable hour, a reporter asked if there was a simple explanation of what he had discovered, Feynman—who never lacked for words—responded that, “there certainly must be… but I don’t know what it is”[Douglas Smith].
For all of his public lack of concern in titles and distinction, by the time of his 1965 Nobel ceremony, Feynman seemed to have experienced a shift. In his acceptance speech, Feynman remained deeply critical of false knowledge. But he also expressed that honors “can generate good feeling, even love among men, even in lands far beyond [their] own.” As Feynman identified it, after the joy of discovery, comes a more personal occurrence:
“the prize, and a deluge of messages — from friends, from relatives, from students, from former teachers, from scientific colleagues, from total strangers…..The prize was a signal to permit them to express and me to learn about their feelings. Each joy, though transient still, repeated in so many places, amounts to a considerable sum of human happiness. And each note of affection, released thus one upon another, has permitted me to realize a depth of love for my friends and acquaintances, which I had never felt so poignantly before.”
As part of his Nobel acceptance, Feynman delivered a much-awaited lecture on his winning research, titled ”The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Feynman took a personal tone in this address, tracing his personal and intellectual relationship with Quantum Electrodynamics (QED).
Feynman reflected that, as an undergraduate at MIT, he had been most inspired by reading German-Jewish Physicist Walter Heitler, and English Physicist and Mathematician Paul Dirac. What stood out most to him in Dirac’s texts were not his calculations but Dirac’s motions to the theory’s incompleteness. This incompleteness, Feynman labeled both, “a challenge and an inspiration.”
Throughout the lecture, Feynman detailed the development of his theorization and scientific thinking:
“My general plan was to first solve the classical problem, to get rid of the infinite self-energies in the classical theory, and to hope that when I made a quantum theory of it, everything would just be fine.That was the beginning, and the idea seemed so obvious to me and so elegant that I fell deeply in love with it.”
Feynman’s Nobel lecture is packed with detailed anecdotes, explorations of QED, and reflections on the purpose of scientific inquiry—particularly inquiry which is unafraid to approach problems from multiple angles. Throughout his address, Feynman maintains a strong commitment to the idea that incorrect science is not a failure but a vital part of progress. Missteps, he suggests, are essential to discovery; they open the doors through which other advancements can emerge.
Feynman reflected:
“It is most striking that most of the ideas developed in the course of this research were not ultimately used in the final result…. But, if my own experience is any guide, the sacrifice [of discarded ideas] is really not great because if the peculiar viewpoint taken is truly experimentally equivalent to the usual in the realm of the known there is always a range of applications and problems in this realm for which the special viewpoint gives one a special power and clarity of thought, which is valuable in itself.”
The Feynman speaking in this lecture is recognizable for his enthusiastic approach to dense physics, his charismatic telling of a tall tale, and his unflinching certainty that knowledge can not be granted, but must be earned.
The Feyman offprint is signed and dated, “Richard P. Feynman / 7.20.66”. It was signed for Peter Zimmerman, an American Ph.D. candidate in physics at Lund University in Sweden. Zimmerman later worked for the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
With an autograph note from Feynman’s secretary Better Brent (dated 7-20-66) to Peter Zimmerman titled “Nobel Lecture” and answering a question from Zimmerman concerning changes between the delivered speech and the printed form. (Brent had typed the speech from the recording of the speech and noted that she made no major changes.) Also with an inscribed first printing of Robert Hofstadter’s lecture for the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1961 titled, “The Electron Scattering Method and its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons”. Inscribed “To Pete Zimmerman / with compliments of / the author. / R. Hofstadter.”
Stockholm, Sweden: The Nobel Foundation, 1966. Thin octavo, original printed wrappers. Fading around wrapper edges; mild imprint from paperclip at top of rear wrapper and final page. With autograph note from Feynman’s secretary Bette Brent and invitation to the 1965 Nobel Prize banquet. Also with: HOFSTADTER, ROBERT. Les Prix Nobel en 1961: The Electron Scattering Method and its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons. Stockholm, Sweden: The Nobel Foundation, 1962. Thin octavo, original wrappers. Some toning around the edges. Housed together in custom box.
EXCEEDINGLY RARE: We are aware of only one other signed offprint of Feynman’s speech that has been on the market.
References:
-Nobel Prize Official Website
-Ralph Leighton, interview by Stephen Dubner , “The Curious Mr. Feynman,” Freakonomics Radio, January 21, 2024, podcast audio, transcript, Freakonomics
-Richard P. Feynman, “Banquet Speech” (speech delivered at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm, December 10, 1965)
-Smith, Douglas. “Feynman’s Nobel Year.” Cal Tech Local, October 21, 2015.
-“The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” Christopher Sykes, 1981; video. (Inventory #: 2954)
“I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, I don’t believe in honors.”
This attitude—what Feynman himself coined, “a disrespect for the respectable,”—was a product of his upbringing. As a young boy, Feynman’s father, a uniform salesman, would often attempt to teach the young Feynman a lesson, opening a photo in the New York Times and showing Feynman an image of the Pope or a politician, surrounded by bowing admirers. He would then ask Feynman what made the Pope different from the ‘ordinary’ people around him. The answer, his father explained, was in the man's uniform, his title, and his prizes. [Sykes, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”].
This early ‘disrespect for the respectable’ was intertwined with Feynman's approach to knowledge. He detested false certainty: those who used big words without knowing their meanings, or theorized without understanding basic principles. This attitude is reflected in his scientific approach. Colleagues recalled how, when they presented theories to him, Feynman would make them explain their ideas from the ground up. Starting with elementary questions, he would force them to build their arguments from the simplest foundations. Inevitably, at some point, a hole in the theory would appear—revealed by Feynman’s method of thinking from bedrock knowledge [Sykes; Leighton].
Perhaps Feynman disliked awards because he understood them as working as an opposite process: creating differences not on bedrock, but on the basis of status conferred by, what he saw as, detached ceremonies in far off lands.
It’s also difficult to gauge if this attitude was wholly genuine. Feynman was a showman. Stories abound of Feynman’s muted reaction to the Nobel. When awoken by a reporter at 3:00 AM, told of his award, and asked if he was pleased, Feynman responded, “I could have found out later in the morning.” When, at a more reasonable hour, a reporter asked if there was a simple explanation of what he had discovered, Feynman—who never lacked for words—responded that, “there certainly must be… but I don’t know what it is”[Douglas Smith].
For all of his public lack of concern in titles and distinction, by the time of his 1965 Nobel ceremony, Feynman seemed to have experienced a shift. In his acceptance speech, Feynman remained deeply critical of false knowledge. But he also expressed that honors “can generate good feeling, even love among men, even in lands far beyond [their] own.” As Feynman identified it, after the joy of discovery, comes a more personal occurrence:
“the prize, and a deluge of messages — from friends, from relatives, from students, from former teachers, from scientific colleagues, from total strangers…..The prize was a signal to permit them to express and me to learn about their feelings. Each joy, though transient still, repeated in so many places, amounts to a considerable sum of human happiness. And each note of affection, released thus one upon another, has permitted me to realize a depth of love for my friends and acquaintances, which I had never felt so poignantly before.”
As part of his Nobel acceptance, Feynman delivered a much-awaited lecture on his winning research, titled ”The Development of the Space-Time View of Quantum Electrodynamics”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Feynman took a personal tone in this address, tracing his personal and intellectual relationship with Quantum Electrodynamics (QED).
Feynman reflected that, as an undergraduate at MIT, he had been most inspired by reading German-Jewish Physicist Walter Heitler, and English Physicist and Mathematician Paul Dirac. What stood out most to him in Dirac’s texts were not his calculations but Dirac’s motions to the theory’s incompleteness. This incompleteness, Feynman labeled both, “a challenge and an inspiration.”
Throughout the lecture, Feynman detailed the development of his theorization and scientific thinking:
“My general plan was to first solve the classical problem, to get rid of the infinite self-energies in the classical theory, and to hope that when I made a quantum theory of it, everything would just be fine.That was the beginning, and the idea seemed so obvious to me and so elegant that I fell deeply in love with it.”
Feynman’s Nobel lecture is packed with detailed anecdotes, explorations of QED, and reflections on the purpose of scientific inquiry—particularly inquiry which is unafraid to approach problems from multiple angles. Throughout his address, Feynman maintains a strong commitment to the idea that incorrect science is not a failure but a vital part of progress. Missteps, he suggests, are essential to discovery; they open the doors through which other advancements can emerge.
Feynman reflected:
“It is most striking that most of the ideas developed in the course of this research were not ultimately used in the final result…. But, if my own experience is any guide, the sacrifice [of discarded ideas] is really not great because if the peculiar viewpoint taken is truly experimentally equivalent to the usual in the realm of the known there is always a range of applications and problems in this realm for which the special viewpoint gives one a special power and clarity of thought, which is valuable in itself.”
The Feynman speaking in this lecture is recognizable for his enthusiastic approach to dense physics, his charismatic telling of a tall tale, and his unflinching certainty that knowledge can not be granted, but must be earned.
The Feyman offprint is signed and dated, “Richard P. Feynman / 7.20.66”. It was signed for Peter Zimmerman, an American Ph.D. candidate in physics at Lund University in Sweden. Zimmerman later worked for the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.
With an autograph note from Feynman’s secretary Better Brent (dated 7-20-66) to Peter Zimmerman titled “Nobel Lecture” and answering a question from Zimmerman concerning changes between the delivered speech and the printed form. (Brent had typed the speech from the recording of the speech and noted that she made no major changes.) Also with an inscribed first printing of Robert Hofstadter’s lecture for the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1961 titled, “The Electron Scattering Method and its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons”. Inscribed “To Pete Zimmerman / with compliments of / the author. / R. Hofstadter.”
Stockholm, Sweden: The Nobel Foundation, 1966. Thin octavo, original printed wrappers. Fading around wrapper edges; mild imprint from paperclip at top of rear wrapper and final page. With autograph note from Feynman’s secretary Bette Brent and invitation to the 1965 Nobel Prize banquet. Also with: HOFSTADTER, ROBERT. Les Prix Nobel en 1961: The Electron Scattering Method and its Application to the Structure of Nuclei and Nucleons. Stockholm, Sweden: The Nobel Foundation, 1962. Thin octavo, original wrappers. Some toning around the edges. Housed together in custom box.
EXCEEDINGLY RARE: We are aware of only one other signed offprint of Feynman’s speech that has been on the market.
References:
-Nobel Prize Official Website
-Ralph Leighton, interview by Stephen Dubner , “The Curious Mr. Feynman,” Freakonomics Radio, January 21, 2024, podcast audio, transcript, Freakonomics
-Richard P. Feynman, “Banquet Speech” (speech delivered at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm, December 10, 1965)
-Smith, Douglas. “Feynman’s Nobel Year.” Cal Tech Local, October 21, 2015.
-“The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” Christopher Sykes, 1981; video. (Inventory #: 2954)
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