| Contributed by
Ken Collins
It's about the early years of Richard Feynman, up to the completion
of the Manhattan Project, and the death of his wife.
What I like particularily is a scene in NY's Chinatown where [Feynman]
races a herbalist using an abacus to approximate the cube root
of 1729.1 (I think). [Feynman] uses a linear approximation, which he
explains clearly and properly to his fiance.
This is the only movie of my experience that actually presents the math
correctly - well except for "Stand and Deliver". Good Will Hunting, for
instance just alludes to "hard" problems - which from the glimpse we are
given looked more like the Koenigsberg Bridges problem.
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(Although, apparently, among the many things the film "messes up" in its translation of the autobiographical stories as written by Feynman onto the big screen, is this abacus story. In his telling of the story, one of the most interesting things about this "abacus challenge" is that it was initiated by the herbalist, not realizing who Feynman was. In contrast, in the movie the competition is suggested by Feynman, and so seems a bit unsportsmanlike.)
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