Richard Feynman's Grave at Mountain View Cemetery (Photo:Tim Jones)
Today I paid my respects at the grave of physicist Richard Feynman, interred with his wife Gweneth at the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, California. Feynman died of cancer in 1988 and his wife died the following year.
Richard Feynman at Fermilab. Image in public domain and available via Wikicommons
The grave is marked by a very simple plaque, which my wife and I would never have found without the help of the cemetery staff. Even then, until we brushed it off, the plaque was barely visible among the leaves and twigs - fallout from the Santa ana winds that have just ripped through the region.
Today was calm and sunny though, and the cemetery is a beautiful spot to find yourself. Lots of trees with birds and squirrels running about, the whole overlooked by the San Gabriel Mountains and Mount Wilson (of 100 inch telescope fame).
Feynman researched and taught as Professor of Physics at the nearby California Institute of Technology in Pasadena from 1950 until his death.
Here are some more photos at the cemetery:
If you don’t know about Richard Feynman, I recommend in addition to his Wikipedia page you check out the biographies Genius
More recently, here’s physicist Leonard Susskind’s personal insight on the man in his January 2011 TED talk ‘My friend Richard Feynman’
and the BBC Horizon ‘No Ordinary Genius’:
Since the mid 1980s, I've worked in university and industrial research, as a manager and editor in technology and environment for an international industry association, and held senior business development, strategy, and procurement posts in industry. I hold a PhD in chemical engineering from Birmingham University, an MBA from Warwick University Business School, and an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College. In 2008, I left industry to focus full-time on my passion for science and technology, and to share that enthusiasm with others as a freelance science communicator. I live in London with my wife Erin.
Peter Mayer at Planetary Radio Live
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Good one, Tim. We were there in 2004 and had similar difficulty finding the location of the grave. Are you planning to drop in on the new Planetary Society HQ while you’re there?
I was there in 1999. The cemetery staff at the time was uniformly unhelpful. None of them had any idea who Richard Feynman was. I was sufficiently upset, not to mention flabbergasted, to write to the cemetery management later and, of course, got zero feedback. But if the people there now know a thing or two, that is for the good. I found the grave by myself but it took at least 15 minutes and it wasn’t even covered by leaves. Before I went, I visited Helen Tuck at Caltech, who was the secretary for 27 years for both Feynman and Murray Gell-mann. She was perfect for that job, because she was unintimidatable but still diplomatic – quite remarkable around these two extraordinary intellects and egos.
Hi Brant, sounds like you had a pretty good Feynman day, in spite of the delay finding him.
The guys at the cemetery said something like “ah, we should know this guy shouldn’t we” – then checked the exact location on a database. So things have moved on a bit.
I discovered after the event that Michelson, of Michelson-Morely Experiment fame is in the same cemetery. Maybe test them out on that one next visit !