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

always had some interest in biology, and the guys talked about very
interesting things. Some of them invited me to come to a course they were
going to have in cell physiology. I knew something about biology, but this
was a graduate course. "Do you think I can handle it? Will the professor let
me in?" I asked.
They asked the instructor, E. Newton Harvey, who had done a lot of
research on light-producing bacteria. Harvey said I could join this special,
advanced course provided one thing - that I would do all the work, and
report on papers just like everybody else.
Before the first class meeting, the guys who had invited me to take the
course wanted to show me some things under the microscope. They had some
plant cells in there, and you could see some little green spots called
chloroplasts (they make sugar when light shines on them) circulating around.
I looked at them and then looked up: "How do they circulate? What pushes
them around?" I asked.
Nobody knew. It turned out that it was not understood at that time. So
right away I found out something about biology: it was very easy to find a
question that was very interesting, and that nobody knew the answer to. In
physics you had to go a little deeper before you could find an interesting
question that people didn't know.
When the course began, Harvey started out by drawing a great, big
picture of a cell on the blackboard and labeling all the things that are in
a cell. He then talked about them, and I understood most of what he said.
After the lecture, the guy who had invited me said, "Well, how did you
like it?"
"Just fine," I said. "The only part I didn't understand was the part
about lecithin. What is lecithin?"
The guy begins to explain in a monotonous voice: "All living creatures,
both plant and animal, are made of little bricklike objects called
'cells'..."
"Listen," I said, impatiently, "I know all that; otherwise I wouldn't
be in the course. What is lecithin?"
"I don't know."
I had to report on papers along with everyone else, and the first one I
was assigned was on the effect of pressure on cells - Harvey chose that
topic for me because it had something that had to do with physics. Although
I understood what I was doing, I mispronounced everything when I read my
paper, and the class was always laughing hysterically when I'd talk about
"blastospheres" instead of "blastomeres," or some other such thing.
The next paper selected for me was by Adrian and Bronk. They
demonstrated that nerve impulses were sharp, single-pulse phenomena. They
had done experiments with cats in which they had measured voltages on
nerves.
I began to read the paper. It kept talking about extensors and flexors,
the gastrocnemius muscle, and so on. This and that muscle were named, but I
hadn't the foggiest idea of where they were located in relation to the
nerves or to the cat. So I went to the librarian in the biology section and
asked her if she could find me a map of the cat.
"A map of the cat, sir?" she asked, horrified. "You mean a zoological
chart!" From then on there were rumors about some dumb biology graduate