FEYNMAN, Richard P.. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character. (PRESENTATION COPY - 1985)

AUTHOR: FEYNMAN, Richard P.

TITLE: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character.

PUBLISHER: NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1985.

DESCRIPTION: PRESENTATION COPY. 1 vol., eighth printing, inscribed on the title-page "To Don Roth / Richard Feynman", hardbound, with the priced DJ, VG+/VG, with the original scarce errata slip.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: An uncommonly interesting association, nicely recalling the first sparks of Feynman’s lifelong passion for figuring out ‘the way things work’. Don Roth (Donald J. Roth, 1931–2010) was Feynman’s first and closest neighbor in California: The two men shared a rented ‘duplex’ at 844/6 Alameda Street in Altadena from 1953 till 1960, when Feynman married Gweneth Howarth and moved to Boulder Drive. Roth was an appliance sales and repairman by trade; and Feynman, it will be remembered, had got his start in physics in much the same way — as a kid in Far Rockaway, repairing his neighbors’ radios and typewriters “by thinking”. They must have had a lot to talk about, this repairman and the gregarious genius next door; and the two men maintained a loose acquaintance long afterwards, as the present copy attests.