Full Color Feynman

I have always described physicist Richard Feynman as a colorful character, but that's never been more true than now, because his life has been immortalized in the colorful form of ... a comic book!

The fine people at First Second books have published a graphic novel which gives a broad overview of the life of CalTech Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, one of the key figures in refining quantum theory throughout the twentieth century. It was a pleasure to read and review this book, called (appropriately enough) Feynman, so check out our Feynman review.

A few months back, I reviewed Lawrence Krauss' excellent Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in Science, and one of my few criticisms was that Krauss really stuck too closely to the science and didn't give much of a sense of the personal charisma and character of Feynman.  This graphic novel does a fairly good job at both aspects, though definitely it leans in favor of character over depth of the scientific concepts. The two books together would give you a fairly comprehensive understanding of Feynman's life, I think.

Feynman became a very public face of physics through his classic Feynman Lectures on Physics, and he told many interesting stories about his life in his two autobiographical essay collections ... stories which provide the basis for much of this graphic novel. In fact, I've had an opportunity to read and review several books for and about Richard Feynman, so I've decided to compile a list of Feynman books that we'll keep on the site. More books will be reviewed and added in the coming weeks, and suggestions are always welcome.

What do you think about the idea of Feynman? Would you be interested in reading a graphic novel about a physicist? Which physicist would you like to see treated in this way? (Note: Einstein has already been comic-ized.)