He obtained an unprecedented perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University (although he did rather poorly on the history and English portions), where he went to study mathematics and physics along with other luminaries such as Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli and John von Neumann. He was refused entry to his first choice Columbia University because of the 'Jewish quota' and attended instead the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1939, and was named a Putnam Fellow.

At Far Rockaway High School in Queens, he excelled in mathematics, and won the New York University Math Championship by a large margin in his final year there. He delighted in repairing radios and demonstrated a talent for engineering from an early age. His sister Joan also became a professional physicist.īy his early youth, Feynman described himself as an 'avowed atheist'. As a child, he was heavily influenced by both his father, Melville, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and his mother, Lucille, from whom he inherited the sense of humour that he maintained throughout his life. Richard Phillips Feynman was born on in Queens, New York to Jewish parents originally from Russia and Poland. He was also regarded as something of an eccentric and free spirit, and brought a wicked sense of humour to his work, as exemplified by his well-known quote “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics”. During his lifetime, he was one of the best-known scientists in the world, and was a great popularizer of physics through his books and lectures. Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning American physicist, particularly known for his contributions to quantum physics, quantum electrodynamics and particle physics, as well as quantum computing and nanotechnology.

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