Richard Feynman, brilliant physicist and beloved teacher, is an iconic figure in the world of science. Raised in Far Rockaway, Queens, Feynman received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942. Despite his youth, he played an important part in the Manhattan Project during World War II, going on to teach at both Cornell and the California Institute of Technology. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his research in quantum electrodynamics.

Many remember his work on the Challenger commission, in particular his famous O-ring experiment, which required nothing more than a glass of ice water (and a healthy disrespect for standard procedure). Besides his work as a physicist, Feynman was at various times an artist, dancer, bongo player, and lock picker.

Richard P. Feynman is the author of many popular and scholarly books, including the bestselling Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!,The Feynman Lectures on Physics, and Six Easy Pieces, which was named one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the 20 th century by The Modern Library. He died in 1988.

While there have been many books celebrating his myriad scientific achievements and personal eccentricities, his personal correspondence has remained largely hidden from view, buried in the archive at Caltech or locked in a box in his daughter's Pasadena home. Now, for the first time, we have the privilege of reading his wonderful notes to students, long-lost relatives, former lovers, crackpots, colleagues, and die-hard fans. From love letters to his first wife Arline, who died at Los Alamos of tuberculosis, to his decades-long attempt to resign from the National Academy of Sciences, together they trace the arc of a marvelous and inventive life, and reveal the full wisdom of a man many felt close to but few really knew. By turns abrasive and charming, intimate and inspiring, we see the many sides of Richard Feynman, and treasure him all the more.