He grew up in Far Rockaway, where even as a youngster he established a reputation for his unbridled curiosity his sense or humor and a talent for mathematics. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1942.
In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology.
His dinner talk on December 29th, 1959 for the American Physical Society meeting at Caltech seems to have started it all, or at least made the idea tangible.
His famous lecture was entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" and postulated the idea of nanotechnology.
Feynman considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms and controlling things on a staggeringly small scale. In nanotechnology, ‘small scale’ means at or around the scale of a nanometer, where one nanometer is a billionth of a meter or about 1/80,000 the width of a human hair.
It was not until November 1979 – 20 years after Feynman’s talk – that ‘Plenty of Room’ was respected as a blueprint for what later called nanotechnology.
The Foresight nanotech Institute created two prizes named after Richard Phillips Feynman, acknowledging his role in launching the field of nanotechnology.
Richard Phillips Feynman and nanotechnology concept
