A couple of years ago, then, I saw a little snippet in a magazine which commented that there was a short play about Feynman being shown (I think at Caltech), where the main part was played by Alan Alda. And if you look at pictures of Alda, at the age he is now, and you look at pictures of Feynman in the eighties, and it wasn't too bad a resemblance, and they say the play worked well. I liked the idea, and was vaguely sorry I didn't get a chance to see it.
So, imagine my surprise when I ran across this; the commencement address (what is a commencement address, anyhow?) Alan Alda gave, at Caltech, in 2002.
Selected fragments:
One day, exactly 28 years ago, he was standing right here, giving the commencement address. This is the way the universe operates. First Richard Feynman gives the talk; then, 28 years later, an actor who played him on the stage gives it. This is what’s called entropy.
I was fascinated by this in him. He knew more than most of us will ever know, and yet he insisted on speaking our language.
Just as Feynman saw a photon taking every possible path on its way to your eye, Feynman himself took every possible path on his way through life. He was the sum of all his histories.
(...) the blackboard on our set contains pretty much everything that was on the final blackboard left by Feynman in his office when he died. And "What I cannot create, I do not understand" was right up there at the top.
You're graduating today partly as Feynman's heirs in this gloriously courageous willingness to be unsure. And just as he was heir to Newton, who was in turn heir to Galileo... I hope you'll think about devoting some time to helping the rest of us become your heirs.
Whatever you do, help us love science the way you do. Like the young man so head over heels about his sweetheart he can’t stop talking about her, like the young woman so in love with her young man she wants everyone to know how wonderful he is... show us pictures, tell us stories, make us crave to meet your beloved.
What if each of you decided to take just one thing you love about science and, no matter how complicated it is, figure out a how to make it understood by a million people? There are about 500 of you taking part in this ceremony today. If just a few of you were successful, that would make several million people a lot smarter.
It's one of those weird things, in a way, because it's a delightful talk, it should be read by you all (it even works in the Bob Wilson "worth defending" story, which any publicly-funded scientist should have on tap), but I keep visualising it as a somewhat out-of-place monologue in a 1970s US comedy.
And, in all... I feel a lot more cheerful for having read it.
Oh, yeah. Let's be internationalist over Endearingly Mad Physicist anecdotes. I like this guy.
