I never understood the appeal of Feynman and these Lectures. It has been a constant topic for years around here.
For example, the Electricity and Magnetism book by Purcell is phenomenal but it is hardly ever mentioned. To quote wikipedia,
Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally written by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, this book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by the National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. In 1999, it was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Feynman was a uniquely gifted teacher that made things intuitive and simple. Those other books are course textbooks for physics majors, and they require an order of magnitude more effort and time to understand.
When I was a physics student the best students seemed to use both types of materials simultaneously. A work like Feynmans would give a bigger picture and more intuitive understanding of what is going on and help you not miss the forest for the trees so to speak, the regular textbooks will teach you all of the little details and math tricks you need to actually solve difficult problems with these concepts.
Feynman was the epitome of "think outside the box" for physics, revisiting most topics with a personnal, "back to first principles" angle. Therefore his lecture notes are engaging and entertaining like no others, and a perfect complementary text to normal text books. When I was in college we used to pair the Feynman lecture notes with the much more dry Landau textbooks. A perfect mix, although probably already outdated at the time.
I'm not sure I'm seeing the mystery - do you mean you think that book is not mentioned enough?
Digestible lectures from a charismatic man (who made the television circuit pretty often) have a different audience than comprehensive textbooks I would think.
If one would really be interested in these kind of things, I'm pretty sure one would be interested in other great resources, like the one mentioned.
If one would really be interested in classical music or philosophy one would sure not miss the (other) giants in the field instead of concentrating on just one or two.
Interested enough to listen to a lecture for an hour is not the same level of interest as focusing on a book for many hours, basically. The two things aren't comparable in terms of depth, and many people are interested only enough for surface level understanding or intuition?
Almost a thousand pages of presumably well thought out and neatly written notes. For lectures, and not even his own research. I'm always amazed at the productivity and output of the great ones.
I never understood the appeal of Feynman and these Lectures. It has been a constant topic for years around here.
For example, the Electricity and Magnetism book by Purcell is phenomenal but it is hardly ever mentioned. To quote wikipedia,
Electricity and Magnetism is a standard textbook in electromagnetism originally written by Nobel laureate Edward Mills Purcell in 1963. Along with David Griffiths' Introduction to Electrodynamics, this book is one of the most widely adopted undergraduate textbooks in electromagnetism. A Sputnik-era project funded by the National Science Foundation grant, the book is influential for its use of relativity in the presentation of the subject at the undergraduate level. In 1999, it was noted by Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. that the book was widely adopted and has many foreign translations.
Something mysterious is going on here.
Feynman was a uniquely gifted teacher that made things intuitive and simple. Those other books are course textbooks for physics majors, and they require an order of magnitude more effort and time to understand.
When I was a physics student the best students seemed to use both types of materials simultaneously. A work like Feynmans would give a bigger picture and more intuitive understanding of what is going on and help you not miss the forest for the trees so to speak, the regular textbooks will teach you all of the little details and math tricks you need to actually solve difficult problems with these concepts.
Feynman was the epitome of "think outside the box" for physics, revisiting most topics with a personnal, "back to first principles" angle. Therefore his lecture notes are engaging and entertaining like no others, and a perfect complementary text to normal text books. When I was in college we used to pair the Feynman lecture notes with the much more dry Landau textbooks. A perfect mix, although probably already outdated at the time.
I'm not sure I'm seeing the mystery - do you mean you think that book is not mentioned enough?
Digestible lectures from a charismatic man (who made the television circuit pretty often) have a different audience than comprehensive textbooks I would think.
If one would really be interested in these kind of things, I'm pretty sure one would be interested in other great resources, like the one mentioned.
If one would really be interested in classical music or philosophy one would sure not miss the (other) giants in the field instead of concentrating on just one or two.
There's the mistery.
Interested enough to listen to a lecture for an hour is not the same level of interest as focusing on a book for many hours, basically. The two things aren't comparable in terms of depth, and many people are interested only enough for surface level understanding or intuition?
History and pop culture (and life) are like that.
Richard Feynman is a person well worth remembering, but I'm sure many of his contemporaries that get talked about less were as well.
So it goes.
Almost a thousand pages of presumably well thought out and neatly written notes. For lectures, and not even his own research. I'm always amazed at the productivity and output of the great ones.
Yeah well he didn't get addicted to computer programming so that gave him a lot of extra time to just think.
Thanks for sharing. This is the best HN post of 2025 as far as my humble self is concerned.