I have been reading and rereading the contributions to this site for two years, and now would like to add my own comments. It is completely obvious that the spirit of Richard Feynman has been well-absorbed and expressed by all the contributors, but for me, the most evocative comments have come from Winang Asmara, Emily Hickey, Rafizah Amran, Stas Vonog, and Jennifer Kallmeyer. I hope that many, many more people will come to know the value of understanding and appreciating the character of Feynman. (Maybe this will be stimulated by the release of a U.S. commemorative stamp honoring Feynman in April 2005 - take a look at [link|http://shop.usps.com/images/05_nscientists37_f.jpg|http://shop.usps.com...cientists37_f.jpg]). This is especially important in the current time, in which disagreement is equated with disloyalty. Feynman never exhibited such sheep-like loyalty to anything - not even to science, because of course, science is always subject to modification and clarification, and at its best, is independent of political manipulation. Readers of "What Do You Care What Other People Think" will appreciate this point well, having read of William Rogers' attempts to shut Feynman up to forego the possibility that the morale of NASA would be hurt by any politically insensitive statements from Feynman. So his frozen O-ring demonstration on live TV in 1986 of how the Challenger blew up was the perfect antidote to such political chicanery, and forced a degree of openness into the investigation that is rare for government (and boy, do we ever need more of that now).

About 4 years ago I visited Feynman's (and wife Gweneth's) gravesite in Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena (take Fair Oaks Drive all the way north and stop just before the curve), and was totally amazed that nobody in the office (where you can get directions) had any idea of who he was. I wrote the cemetery about this undeserved ignorance toward Feynman and of course, got absolutely no response at all. Even after you get directions, you have to look pretty hard in the correct vicinity, because the stone is a flat slab set in the ground near a small tree, not much different from the neighboring flat slabs. And this incident sort of fits in with what it must have been like to be Feynman. No matter how many people he knew, what he did best was work completely alone. Because he was determined to find totally new insights when he was working, he never sought the comfort of adulation or approval of people (the vast majority) who were caught up in trendy pursuits. This seems remarkable for a man who could clearly get along with just about any type of person despite his tremendous intelligence, except for self-important fools (see "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" for many stories of this type).

How has Feynman affected my life? Well, I do have a Ph.D. in physics, but I never met Feynman. I was happy to find out later that a lot of his adventures sounded like stuff that I would do, though (from "Surely You're Joking"), and to me that meant that I couldn't have stopped myself from having them. I do have a story to relate In the same spirit of Feynman's refusal to follow the crowd. I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1974 and immediately noticed that there was no known mechanism to explain why high blood sugar levels could facilitate erosion of blood vessel membranes leading to leakiness and/or clot formation. This is called angiopathy, and is really why diabetics die, but almost nobody was trying to find alternate mechanisms. So I charged off into the medical literature, and found a couple of obscure reports implicating free radicals, whereupon I started taking Vitamin E and aspirin while switching careers from physical chemistry to diabetes research. Twenty five years later, the American Diabetes Association stated that they now recommended taking Vitamin E and aspirin. I wound up using those same ideas in stroke research, and without a single bit of formal training in medicine, managed to become a full professor of neurology.

In closing, I trust that this website will continue to inspire its readers to try for the very best they can in the same manner as Richard Feynman, despite all manner of obstacles in front of them; to learn how to live with enthusiasm and determination to find out the truth; and then SAY what you have learned regardless of potential political fallout, so the rest of us can know too.

--- Brant Watson