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Audiences, Awe, and Awards: Richard Feynman Ideas
about lecture attendees and hanging up on his Nobel call
Matt Zeigler
November 11, 2024
Imagine you know a lot about a topic, and every time you show up to talk to other experts about it, or even when you want to just sit with the advanced degree students in the field, the ones who want to ask the hard-probing and thought-provoking questions, that you can’t, and it’s all because the word gets out and random regular people show up.
Can you imagine the frustration?
Richard Feynman used to tell physics clubs to promote any event he was to appear at as if were somebody else. They should make the topic extra technical or boring sounding too. That way, only the club members would show up, he could walk in and say, “Professor so-and-so had some personal difficulties and was unable to come and speak to you today, so he telephoned me and asked if I would talk to you about the subject since I’ve been doing some work in the field, so here I am,” and everybody could get what they wanted.
The tactic worked great. But once the broader school got word THE Professor Feynman had been there, they’d get upset. Feynman was a draw, and people wanted to hear from him, even if they didn’t totally “get” the subject matter.
There’s an audience lesson inside this.
The people you want to reach may not be the only people who want to hear from you.
If you’re famous, like Richard Feynman, you have to come up with ways to get in front of just the people you want to get in front of.
If you’re not famous, you have to come up with ways to either get a small group to care first, or, if you’re really skilled (and not afraid to fail), come up with a way to get a broader groups attention.
The harsh reality of it all is—getting the right attention from the right people so that everybody is happy, it’s really hard, if not downright impossible.
Add the fact that Feynman himself wasn’t into awe, or uniforms, or the pomp and circumstance of titles, there’s a balance to be understood in hierarchy and community. It’s nuanced. It’s hard to leave some and take some other when a large part of it is just how we humans are hardwired.
Take when Feynman won the Nobel Prize. If you live in America, the call is known to come in the early hours of the morning. Here’s how he tells the story in "Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
For many years I would look, when the time was coming around to give out the Prize, at who might get it. But after a while I wasn’t even aware of when it was the right “season.” I therefore had no idea why someone would be calling me at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning.
“Professor Feynman?”
“Hey! Why are you bothering me at this time in the morning?”
“I thought you’d like to know that you’ve won the Nobel Prize.”
“Yeah, but I’m sleeping! It would have been better if you had called me in the morning.” —and I hung up.
My wife said, “Who was that?”
“They told me I won the Nobel Prize.”
“Oh, Richard, who was it?” I often kid around and she is so smart that she never gets fooled, but this time I caught her.
The phone rings again: “Professor Feynman, have you heard…”
(In a disappointed voice) “Yeah.”
Then I began to think, “How can I turn this all off? I don’t want any of this…”
Focus on the audience you want to reach.
The awe and the awards, if they follow, still—focus on the audience you want to reach.
That’s as much an internal decision as it an external one.