Richard Feynman

Richard Phillips Feynman shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, the theory governing how light and matter interact. He'd already helped build the atomic bomb during World War II and gone on to develop the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, explain superfluidity in supercooled helium, and propose the parton model for understanding particles inside protons. He held the Richard C. Tolman professorship at Caltech and pioneered ideas in quantum computing and nanotechnology, including his 1959 talk "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom." The 1980s brought him to the wider public twice: first through Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, a collection of his stories, then as the plain-spoken member of the Rogers Commission who demonstrated on live television why the Challenger shuttle failed. A 1999 poll of physicists ranked him seventh-greatest of all time.