A photocopy of what you are looking for can be found in Box 16, Folder 1...(pg 10 of the PDF) with the original at Niels Bohr Library: "Guide to the Papers of Richard Phillips Feynman, 1933-1988" - http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/caltech/feynmanr.pdf
It seems quite a lot of work to be done on organizing all this.
"... The great mass of Feynman's working notes are scattered on miscellaneous sheets of papers, envelopes, placemats, and seemingly whatever else was at hand when thoughts struck him. Feynman occasionally took time to organize these into a system for files, although only a small fraction of his notes found their way into such a system. The great majority was left in a scattered condition and grouped during the processing of the papers as well as possible by subject matter. Many miscellaneous papers remain..."
Feynman said the first thing seriously in a superb in-depth interview with the historian Charles Weiner. The second is a facetious quote from someone else (Murray Gell-Mann, who seemed rather irritated with the question, as I recall).
As far as I can tell, most theoretical physicists: (a) can do a surprising amount in their head, especially when deeply familiar with a problem; and (b) have their ability greatly expanded when working on paper or with some other external aid (whiteboard etc).
Source: worked as a theoretical physicist for ~13 years. On a few occasions I solved publishable problems in my head, though usually after a lot of immersion in conversation and on paper first, just getting familiar with the problem, but (superficially) making little progress. More often, though, serious work involved a lot of exploration using external aids. I haven't done a poll of other theoretical physicists, but based on informal conversations wouldn't be surprised if many have a similar experience, with considerable variation.
Update: the Gell-Mann comment is here: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/magazine/part-showman-all... My interpretation is that he's being facetious, but with a grain of truth - a habit research students sometimes need to break is when they rely too much on methods as a crutch. Sometimes, no method will work, you just need to think really hard and try lots of things.
This was not Feynman's own description of himself, it was how his colleague Murray Gell-Mann described Feynman's process [0]. The way that appears to others may differ from how someone believes they are working themselves.
For many decades I've done this with my work notes.
I use a cross-indexing scheme, using square brackets to mean "this uses information in item X" and angle brackets for "this is used by item Y". The latter is really important, because if I find an error in an early note, I can trace it's effect easily through later work.
My reference scheme is simple: X and Y are of the form B.P, where B is book number and P is page number in that book. I write these X and Y items in the margin, where they are easily visible, and later I copy them to the first page of the entry.
In addition to the above, I use keywords, and these go in the table of contents along with titles.
Every once in a while, I transcribe the table of contents and the cross-indexing information into a computer file, so that I can do logical operations on the data and find things I need.
None of this takes much effort, and it comes in handy when you're doing quite a lot of work at once.
I had schoolteachers that insisted on it. There’s also a popular note taking methodology called “bullet journaling” or “bujo” that took off sometime before Tumblr committed sudoku (so it spread around a bit there) that’s built entirely around distinguishable bullet points and indexing your notes–some more artistically than others.
There's a lengthy oral history, a series of interviews with him, on the American Institute of Physics website [1]. They're constantly talking about his notebooks and how he can go back to look things up in them.
That's how we were taught how to do it in school. We used to keep first 4-5 pages of every notebook blank to accommodate this. The first thing the teacher used to check was if the index was up to date. I guess it helped them too as assignments were easy to find. But then again latest home work was on the last page anyways .
Eventually some companies started producing notebooks with a printed index form. Those were more expensive and thus became status signals.
I've tried it but can never keep up with it. The trouble is it requires particular notebooks to be on hand when you need them, or later "clean up" efforts to incorporate slapdash notes into your system.
However—I do it with digital notes! Thanks to the magic of full-text search, this amounts to just making sure to add enough relevant terms when creating a note that you'll be sure to find it later when you search for it. I find anything more involved too high-friction—I will end up neglecting it until it's useless. Even folders or categories or whatever are too much and will end up a mess. Search is the only thing that works for me.
I expect that if I worked off paper all the time, as most folks used to, it'd be easier to keep up with a paper indexing/TOC system. As it is, I almost never forget my phone, but have constantly forgotten various notebooks I've tried to keep. So, digital it is.
It's certainly 'normal' in academic and some professional circles. To the extent that the writing is the work, the indexing and other organizing methods suggested by a variety of note-taking "methodologies" is part of the work.
It also occurs to me that working before the age of ubiquitous computing devices readily at hand, the handwritten notes where the notes, not an adjunct to a notes app, online storage, and other assists for automatic indexing.
However, for the sort of person who still makes handwritten notes in their primary information-gathering step, going back and indexing them, even when the notes, or some abstracted form of them, will be entered into a computer.
It depends of why you are taking them. It's useless if you just want them to write minutes later or take them to help you stay focused like most people. But if you actually need them later like most researchers do, you will quickly pin for a way to sort through them easily and an index is pretty much as good as it gets.
I never did. My notes were not in chronological order anyway. I would just scribble on a random free page and my notes would be almost illegible even to me.
It didn't matter, it's the process of writing down itself that establishes them in the mind. At least it is for me.
I did for a very long time. Learned it from a biologist. In my experience bench scientists tend to have better notebook discipline than people in other professions.
I consider Feynman one of the all-time great men of history, alongside Richard Stallman and Jesus Christ, but this article doesn't really add much. His brilliance was realised later on in life, not as a teenager, young boy, toddler, baby or zygote. I think it's better to focus on his achievements then, not thence.
>I consider Feynman one of the all-time great men of history, alongside Richard Stallman and Jesus Christ.
I recognize my comment doesn't add much but this might be the funniest thing I've ever read on HN. Not even in a derisive way its just funny in a way that is hard to put into words.
I don't believe greatness can come out of nowhere later in life. To borrow from Seneca, to demonstrate greatness, opportunity must meet pre-existing preparation. As such, I find the early lives of great people to be very interesting.
As another example, I highly recommend Nicola Tesla's "My Inventions"; he was unbelievably prepared for greatness
(Above is a link to Thompson’s Calculus for the practical man, which Feynman mentions by name, although it’d probably be better to let the Internet Archive redirect the download wherever they want it to be from[1].)
When I read about his obesssion with the series of math books "for the practical man" I went out and got my kids a copy. My daughter loved those books and carried them around wherever she went.
Readit News
Since the article is already 5 years old ("(2017)" missing from the title), I'm not the first one thinking this. A Web search led to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/8smja9/is_there_a_... but nothing more, unfortunately.
"Guide to the Papers of Richard Phillips Feynman, 1933-1988" https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt5n39p6k0/admin/
A photocopy of what you are looking for can be found in Box 16, Folder 1...(pg 10 of the PDF) with the original at Niels Bohr Library: "Guide to the Papers of Richard Phillips Feynman, 1933-1988" - http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/caltech/feynmanr.pdf
It seems quite a lot of work to be done on organizing all this.
"... The great mass of Feynman's working notes are scattered on miscellaneous sheets of papers, envelopes, placemats, and seemingly whatever else was at hand when thoughts struck him. Feynman occasionally took time to organize these into a system for files, although only a small fraction of his notes found their way into such a system. The great majority was left in a scattered condition and grouped during the processing of the papers as well as possible by subject matter. Many miscellaneous papers remain..."
Also looks like another goldmine are the Caltech Archives' Historical Files: https://collections.archives.caltech.edu/search?op%5B%5D=&q%...
-Richard Feynman
The Feynman Algorithm:
Implying that the "thinking" happens in the head, not on the paper.There's a quote for everything, and its opposite, too. Sometimes from the same guy.
As far as I can tell, most theoretical physicists: (a) can do a surprising amount in their head, especially when deeply familiar with a problem; and (b) have their ability greatly expanded when working on paper or with some other external aid (whiteboard etc).
Source: worked as a theoretical physicist for ~13 years. On a few occasions I solved publishable problems in my head, though usually after a lot of immersion in conversation and on paper first, just getting familiar with the problem, but (superficially) making little progress. More often, though, serious work involved a lot of exploration using external aids. I haven't done a poll of other theoretical physicists, but based on informal conversations wouldn't be surprised if many have a similar experience, with considerable variation.
Update: the Gell-Mann comment is here: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/magazine/part-showman-all... My interpretation is that he's being facetious, but with a grain of truth - a habit research students sometimes need to break is when they rely too much on methods as a crutch. Sometimes, no method will work, you just need to think really hard and try lots of things.
[0] http://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm
I use a cross-indexing scheme, using square brackets to mean "this uses information in item X" and angle brackets for "this is used by item Y". The latter is really important, because if I find an error in an early note, I can trace it's effect easily through later work.
My reference scheme is simple: X and Y are of the form B.P, where B is book number and P is page number in that book. I write these X and Y items in the margin, where they are easily visible, and later I copy them to the first page of the entry.
In addition to the above, I use keywords, and these go in the table of contents along with titles.
Every once in a while, I transcribe the table of contents and the cross-indexing information into a computer file, so that I can do logical operations on the data and find things I need.
None of this takes much effort, and it comes in handy when you're doing quite a lot of work at once.
[1] https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral... (link to fifth session)
Eventually some companies started producing notebooks with a printed index form. Those were more expensive and thus became status signals.
However—I do it with digital notes! Thanks to the magic of full-text search, this amounts to just making sure to add enough relevant terms when creating a note that you'll be sure to find it later when you search for it. I find anything more involved too high-friction—I will end up neglecting it until it's useless. Even folders or categories or whatever are too much and will end up a mess. Search is the only thing that works for me.
I expect that if I worked off paper all the time, as most folks used to, it'd be easier to keep up with a paper indexing/TOC system. As it is, I almost never forget my phone, but have constantly forgotten various notebooks I've tried to keep. So, digital it is.
Deleted Comment
It also occurs to me that working before the age of ubiquitous computing devices readily at hand, the handwritten notes where the notes, not an adjunct to a notes app, online storage, and other assists for automatic indexing.
However, for the sort of person who still makes handwritten notes in their primary information-gathering step, going back and indexing them, even when the notes, or some abstracted form of them, will be entered into a computer.
It didn't matter, it's the process of writing down itself that establishes them in the mind. At least it is for me.
I re-watched this year with my kids (a few days after Hurt's death) and we all liked it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Infinity
Deleted Comment
I recognize my comment doesn't add much but this might be the funniest thing I've ever read on HN. Not even in a derisive way its just funny in a way that is hard to put into words.
As another example, I highly recommend Nicola Tesla's "My Inventions"; he was unbelievably prepared for greatness
For aspiring high school students to follow Feynman’s footsteps
[1] https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.462654/2015.4...