Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Why do you try to get out of teaching all the time, Tecs?

"In the 1950s by when Oppenheimer had become the IAS's third director, the Nobel laureate Feynman turned down a professorship at the institute. In his engaging and ungrammatical style, he was more convincing than Oppenheimer in explaining why. Said Feynman:

"When I was at Princeton in the 1940's I can see what happened to those great minds at the Institute for Advanced Study, who had been specially selected for their tremendous brains and were now given this opportunity to sit in this lovely house by the woods there, with no classes to teach, with no obligations whatsoever. These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves. Okay? So they don't get an idea for a while. They have every opportunity to do something and they are not getting any ideas. I believe that in a situation like this a kind of guilt or depression worms inside of you, and you begin to worry about not getting any ideas. and nothing happens. Still no ideas come.

"Feynman said that in his own infertile periods his students jerked his mind toward a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It's not so easy to remind yourself of these things. I find that teaching and the students keep life going and I would never accept any position in which somebody had invented a happy situation for me where I don't have to teach. Never."

10 comments:

Tecumseh said...

Nice story. And yes, I see very well the point. But who said it? No link, Herr Html. Ah, for those times when I was teaching you how to click on things! Evidently, I didn't do such a great job...

Mr roT said...

Feynman said it, Prof Holmes, S. No link. Mom sent me the quote.

Tecumseh said...

You know, there is such thing as Google, Herr Rott... Clicking on things, it looks to me like the quote comes from "John Von Neumann: The Scientific Genius Who Pioneered the Modern Computer", by Norman MacRae
(page 176).

Tecumseh said...

You know, that's the same von Neumann who putzed around with some dinky operators. I have to explain everything to you...

Mr roT said...

Where's the link, Dr Html?

Powwww!

Tecumseh said...

No link for you -- it's your story, you shoulda provide one. That's the rule. You want a link? Pay up.

Arelcao Akleos said...

Ah, from Feynman to the endless war over Payment in FCP kind. On this site, all is linked.

Mr roT said...

GUT

Tecumseh said...

Sehr Gut.

Mr roT said...

pay up