by Jagdish Mehra

isbn: 0198518870
subject: Nonfiction, Biography, General Science
finished: 8/23/1998

Because Richard Feynman is one of my heroes, I read a lot by him and about him. Although I enjoyed Gleick's Genius when I read it a few years ago, I'd say that this book is the definitive Feynman biography. However, it is not for everybody: it goes into Feynman's contributions to physics in great detail -- towards the middle of the book many pages are filled with beautiful equations and difficult explanations. The style of the biography is strange: chapters and sections often contain a small amount of duplicate material, as if they were meant to be read by themselves rather than as part of a book. Also, relatively few of the 600 pages are spent on Feynman's life after he won the Nobel Prize in 1965. Despite these quirks, Mehra's book is well written, and paints a vivid picture of a great man.