My wife's started reading the book on Richard Feynman (I finished it last night).  She thinks he sounds like a cocky asshole.  I see her point, but I think he sounds like an amazingly fun guy to spend a week with.  I guess I'm willing to accept a certain amount of cockiness if you're willing to back it up with some knowledge, and I'm always attracted to Renaissance style people (Ben Franklin, Charles Munger, Feynman, Newton, DaVinci) that are multi-disciplinary in nature.

11:39:40 PM  #  

In all my excitement about William Gibson's weblog I neglected to mention that his new book, "Pattern Recognition" drops in February!  You can preorder at Amazon right now if you so desire.
7:41:49 PM  #  

Stephen Wolfram is another one of those "eccentric mad scientist types" (and a buddy of Richard Feynman's) if you are interested.

4:40:33 PM  #  

More Richard Feynman anecdotes at The Long Now Foundation. via  [black belt jones]

I do not mean to imply that Richard was hesitant to do the "dirty work." In fact, he was always volunteering for it. Many a visitor at Thinking Machines was shocked to see that we had a Nobel Laureate soldering circuit boards or painting walls. But what Richard hated, or at least pretended to hate, was being asked to give advice. So why were people always asking him for it? Because even when Richard didn't understand, he always seemed to understand better than the rest of us. And whatever he understood, he could make others understand as well. Richard made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult. He was never afraid of telling the truth, and however foolish your question was, he never made you feel like a fool.

4:29:55 PM  #