14. RICHARD FEYNMAN

I toss out a lot of nonsense about heroes, this person being my hero and that person being my hero, and most of the time it's just nonsense. I'm not lying exactly, but I am exaggerating. When I tell you that Richard Feynman is my hero, I am not padding the truth one angstrom.

Partially it's the renaissance man thing - I have a weakness for multi-talented people (just as I have a weakness for the obsessed and monofocused - you will have gathered by now, if you have gathered anything, that I have an almost pathological inability to make up my mind). He played the bongos, philosophized, painted, fixated on Tuva, and solved the great problems of physics with style and panache.

Partially it's because he was the sort of smartass whizkid I always longed to be - the difference between us is that he got out his smartass longings by fixing people's radios and inventing more efficient systems of peeling potatoes, and I got mine out by reading Harriet the Spy and his damn autobiography. There are times when I wish I had been born with a little less imagination, as that might have required me to get out and have my own fun instead of being content with vicarious living.

Partially it's because he was an excellent writer. The aforementioned autobiography (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, and a companion volume, What Do You Care What Other People Think?) is a compulsive read, and he manages to convey whizkid smartassness without making you want to smack him (as well as explaining what physics and math is crucial to the plot without being confusing). The books are mostly not about physics (if it's physics you want, I am told his Lectures on Physics are without peer, but it is not physics I want), though they are shot through with curiosity and investigation. I do hope you like those.

And then there's some nebulous extra ingredient in there somewhere, a feeling of rapt but patient exploration, the sort of anxiety-free science experience that I haven't had since my dad sat me down with the multi-colored marbles from the Chinese checkers set and showed me how to map out the molecular structure of 2-2-4 trimethylpentane on the carpet. (That is 100-octane gasoline, in case you're curious. I don't know how he chose that particular molecule as an example, but I'm sure he'd have given more thought to the selection process if he'd known I would still be so deeply imprinted 12 years later.)

The science in Feynman books is not the 50-minute-class-period science I had in high school, racing to finish the lab (a boring experiment on dilapidated equipment with disinterested lab partners). Nor is it the elementary-school science of pea sprouts and food coloring. Nor is it the kind of science I did at my cancer research center job in high school, replicating an already-done experiment (and one whose results had been a foregone conclusion even when it was done the first time). I like all those kinds of science (with the exception of all but one of my abominable high school science classes - that my interest in biology revived after a supremely awful 9th grade is a testament to the superhuman skill and patience of Ms. Masse - bless you, madame, wherever you are). But I like Feynman's science better - following ants with markers to see how they walk, not expecting, or expected, to write a paper on it later, just investigating.

And here I am living vicariously again! Damn you, Feynman! Off I go to burn some stuff with a magnifying glass, do long division by hand, and steal the door!