The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

After the war Feynman joined Hans Bethe, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physics at Cornell University. He turned down the offer of a job at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.

They must have expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this and I wasn’t wonderful, and therefore realized a new principle, which was not that I’m not responsible for what other people think I am able to do; I don’t have to be good because they think I’m going to be good. And somehow or other I could relax about this, and I thought to myself, I haven’t done anything important and I’m never going to do anything important. But I used to enjoy physics and mathematical things and because I used to play with them it was very short order (that I) worked the things out for which I later won the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize – Was It Worth It?

Feynman was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics.

What I essentially did – and also it was done independently by two other people, (Sinitiro) Tomanaga in Japan and (Julian) Schwinger – was to figure out how to control, how to analyze and discuss the original quantum theory of electricity and magnetism that had been written in 1928; how to interpret it so as to avoid the infinities, to make calculations for which has been done so far, so that quantum electrodynamics fits experiment in every detail where its applicable- not involving the nuclear forces, for instance-and it was the work that I did in 1947 to figure out how to do that, for which I won the Nobel Prize.

Nobel Foundation The Pomp and Circumstance of a Nobel Prize Ceremony

I don’t know anything about the Nobel Prize, I don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y, or z wins the Nobel Prize then so be it. I won’t have anything to do with the Nobel Prize…it’s a pain in the….I don’t like honors. I appreciate it, and I know there’s a lot of physicists who use my work, I don’t need anything else, I don’t think there’s any sense to anything else. I don’t think that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize – I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it (my work) - those are the real things, the honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors, it bothers me, honors bother, honors is epaulettes, honors is uniforms. My papa bought me up this way. I can’t stand it, it hurts me.