"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"They were advertising all the time in Modern Plastics with full-page
advertisements showing all the things they could plate, and we realized that
they were further along than we were."
"Did you have any stuff from them?"
"No, but you could tell from the advertisements that they were way
ahead of what we could do. Our process was pretty good, but it was no use
trying to compete with an American process like that."
"How many chemists did you have working in the lab?"
"We had six chemists working."
"How many chemists do you think the Metaplast Corporation had?"
"Oh! They must have had a real chemistry department!"
"Would you describe for me what you think the chief research chemist at
the Metaplast Corporation might look like, and how his laboratory might
work?"
"I would guess they must have twenty-five or fifty chemists, and the
chief research chemist has his own office - special, with glass. You know,
like they have in the movies - guys coming in all the time with research
projects that they're doing, getting his advice, and rushing off to do more
research, people coming in and out all the time. With twenty-five or fifty
chemists, how the hell could we compete with them?"
"You'll be interested and amused to know that you are now talking to
the chief research chemist of the Metaplast Corporation, whose staff
consisted of one bottle-washer!"

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Part 2


The Princeton Years



----
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"


When I was an undergraduate at MIT I loved it. I thought it was a great
place, and I wanted to go to graduate school there too, of course. But when
I went to Professor Slater and told him of my intentions, he said, "We won't
let you in here."
I said, "What?"
Slater said, "Why do you think you should go to graduate school at
MIT?"
"Because MIT is the best school for science in the country."
"You think that?"
"Yeah."
"That's why you should go to some other school. You should find out how
the rest of the world is."
So I decided to go to Princeton. Now Princeton had a certain aspect of
elegance. It was an imitation of an English school, partly. So the guys in