The Best Books on Richard Feynman's Life and Science

The motion of planets around the sun:

Reconstruction of Feynman's lost lecture held to the freshmen of the CIT (California Institute of Tecnology) March, 13 1964. This lecture is one of those not included in "Feynman Lectures on Physics" (Richard Feynman and Ralph Leighton).

The brillant lecture on the motion of planets around the sun explained with mathematical instruments not more complex than flat geometry. In the Feynman's notes has been found evident reference to the demonstration of Keplero's laws, like those Newton had reported in his "Principia Mathematica", but, like Feynman says, at a certain point of the lesson the approach is original at all .

Easy to read due to the redundant explanations and pictures.

The biography of a great scientist, an illuminant analysis of the creativity.

A detailed biography that give a complete picture of the scientist and the period in which he moves. A rich source of information and a detailed bibliography  make it a kind of " handbook " on Feynman: an attempt to know his brilliant mind on the background of the quick scientific evolution of that period.

The Beat of a Different Drum is a Feynman biography that besides describing his life and his personality deepens more than every other biography into the details of his scientific work. The Beat of a Different Drum is born under Feynman's request to Jagdish Mehra, that had previously written the biographies of Dirac, Heisenberg and Pauli. Three weeks of talks with Feynman and interviews to about eighty people who knew him and some aspects of its work, contributed to produce this important job on one of the greatest American Theoretical Physicist  of the Twentieth Century.

John and Mary Gribbins, scientific writers, describe the every day life of Feynman. This kind of approach gives us a report of the meaning of his work in the context of those years. Contrarily to other writers they do not emphasized the Feynman's adventures (bongo player, safe cracker, topless bar, and so on)  but its figure of scientist.

Between several authors (Gell-Mann, Wheeler, Bethe, Dyson, Schwinger, Bjorken, Goodstein, Cohen, Goldberger, Hillis, Joan Feynman) evidences Gell-Mann with his critical vision on the Feynman's way of life .

It's included a small photographic collection of Joan Feynman.