they do not th~nl~ catefully about ~t, ~s the Platonic s c h o o l Plato ( 4 2 7 B C - 3 4 7 BC) cla,med the ~dea o f a chaz~ was

mo~e ~eal than a n y pa~twu l a r chair Thus P l a t o n w Mathem a t ~ c m n s w,ll s a y they 'd~scove~ed' a result, not 'created' ~t The houble wzth P l a t o m s m ,s ~t f a z l s to be very behevable, and certainly cannot account fo~ how M a t h e m a h c s evolves, as d~st,nct f r o m e v p a n d , n g and elaborating, the b a s w ~deas and d e f i m t,ons o f Mathematics have g~adually changed ove~ the centuries, and th~s does not f i t well w~th the ,dea o f the , m m u t a b l e P l a t o m c ~deas I w a s a graduate student ~n M a t h e m a t t c s when th,s f a c t [Hdbert's ~nsert~on o f axzoms o f betweeness and ~ntersectzon ~nto E u c h d ' s postulates fo~ plane geometry] came to m y att e n h o n I read up on st a b,t, and then thought a great deal The~e a~e, I am told, some 4 6 7 theorems ,n Euchd, but not one o f these theorems tu~v, ed out to be false afte~ Halbert added h~s postulates It soon became emdent to m e one o f the reasons no theorem u, as false was that Hdbert 'knot,' the Euchdean theorems u, ete 'correct,' and he had p~clted h~s added postulates so th~s would be true But then I soon reahzed E u c h d had been ,n the same pos~hon, E u c h d k n e w the 'truth' o f the Pythagorean theo~em, and m a n y othe~ theorems, and had to f i n d a system o f postulates w h i c h would let h~m get the ~esults he k n e w ~n advance E u c h d dzd not lay down postulates and m a k e deduchons as ~t ,s commonly taught, he felt h,s w a y back f r o m 'known' results to the postulates he needed~

Department of Mathematical Sciences Stevens Institute of Technology Castle Potnt on Hudson Hoboken NJ 07030 USA e-mail rptnkham@stevens-tech edu

EDITOR'S NOTE On the o b i t u a r y p a g e of the New York Times, Sunday, J a n 11, 1998, t h e r e a p p e a r e d an article u n d e r the headhne, 'Richard Hamming, 82 Dies, P i o n e e r in Digital T e c h n o l o g y " I quote from the article
R~cha~d Wesley H a m m z n g , who d~scove~ed mathematzcal f o r m u l a s that allow computers to correct thez~ own errots, mako~g possible such ~nnovah o n s as modems, compact dzsks and satelhte c o m m u n t c a t w n s , d~ed on Wednesday at a hospital ,n Monterey, C a h f , where he heed He was 82 He d~ed o f a heart attach, h~s f a m ~ly sa~d

Feynman's Lost Lecture

by David L Goodste~n and J u d i t h R Goodste~n
LONDON JONATHAN CAPE (1996) ISBN 0 224 04394 3

REVIEWED BY GRAHAM W G R I F F I T H S

Richard Hamnung has served as a c o n s u l t a n t to the E l d e r s of the M o r m o n Church, s e r v e d on the Board of Directors of a large c o m p u t e r corporation, spent 30 y e a r s as a Member o f Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories, l e c t u r e d world-wide, received a n u m b e r of p r e s t i g i o u s m e d a l s a n d awards, and s p e n t 20 y e a r s at Naval P o s t g r a d u a t e School m the thick of educaUon His chatty, idiosyncratic, s o m e t ] m e s annoying, a l w a y s t h o u g h t provol~ng b o o k is one of a kind and a t e m b l y good r e a d

Richard F,eynman was one of flus century s great physlctsts He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physics with Juhan Schwmger a n d Shimchtro T o m o n a g a for the invention o f quant u m e l e c t r o d y n a m i c s Most p e o p l e with an interest in things scmnt]fic will recall that F e y n m a n served m 1986 on the p r e s i d e n t i a l c o m m m s m n investigating the Challenger s p a c e shuttle disa s t e r D u n n g a televised h e a n n g o f the commission, he d r a m a t i c a l l y d e m o n s t r a t e d that O-nng seal failure at low t e m p e r a t u r e s was a likely c a u s e o f the acodent In 1961 Feyrmlan agreed to t e a c h the two-year introductory physics course at the Cahforma Institute of Technology Ttus s e n e s of lectures was r e c o r d e d and transcribed, and the b l a c k b o a r d s p h o t o g r a p h e d F r o m this mformatmn, the mteruatmnally r e n o w n e d "Feynman

Lectures on Physics" were p r o d u c e d and p u b h s h e d In 1687 N e w t o n published his inverse-square l a w of grawty In the magnificent w o r k Phdosoph,ce N a t u ~ a h s P ~ n c , p ~ a M a t h e m a t w a , n o w commonly k n o w n as the Ib'~nc,pm The Pr~nc~pm is p r o b a b l y the greatest scientific w o r k e v e r published and has lnt n g u e d scmntmts and m a t h e m a t i c i a n s b e c a u s e o f the vast extent of the ground c o v e r e d a n d the beauty a n d difficulty of the p r o o f s zt c o n t a m s F e y n m a n ' s Lost Lecture is a reconstructaon of a lecture gqven by F e y n m a n which centered around attemptmg to prove Newton's mverse-square law of gravity using only the mathematmal tools available to Newton Thts lecture was gnven to freshmen at Caltech at the end of the w i n t e r quarter in 1964 as a guest lecture, not part of the ongmal lecture course It w a s ongmally r e c o r d e d on audio cassette, but the accompanymg photographs were nnslmd Thus, it had not been possible to reconstruct this lecture until m April 1992 Feynman's ongmal notes were dtscovered m the office of his colleague, Robert Lelghtman, followmg Leightman's death Once F e y n m a n ' s notes w e r e unearthed, D a w d Goodstem, a p h y s m s p r o f e s s o r at Caltech who w o r k e d with Feynman, w a s able to r e c o n s t r u c t b y sleuthhke d e d u c t i o n the lecture m its entirely It is n o t m a d e clear w h e t h e r it was ever a t t e m p t e d to locate n o t e s t a k e n b y a t t e n d e e s at the lecture for verification p u r p o s e s By w a y of an introduction to the subject, the b o o k p r o v i d e s b a c k g r o u n d m f o r m a t m n relating to the w o r k o f Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton, and others, t o g e t h e r with s o m e amusing anecdotal r e m ] m s c e n c e s of D G o o d s t e m ' s relatmnship with F e y n m a n Some photographs of F e y n m a n at the blackb o a r d are also r e p r o d u c e d The epilogue d i s c u s s e s b n e f l y the w o r k o f Maxwell and Rutherford, and describes how, after two h u n d r e d years, Einstein's t h e o n e s of relatlv~ty supers e d e d N e w t o n ' s t h e o r y of gravttatmn for s p e e d s a p p r o a c h i n g the s p e e d of light and for large c o n c e n t r a t i o n s of matter The r e c o n s t r u c t i o n is a bit l a b o r e d in places, p a r t i c u l a r l y m r e s p e c t o f

THE MATHEMATICAL tNTELLIGENCER

G t

F=gure 1 Construct,on Of Elhpse

Kepler's 2nd Law (equal areas swept out in equal time, which also implies c o n s e r v a t i o n of angular m o m e n t u m ) A more interesting part of the lecture is where F e y n m a n appeals to F e r m a t ' s Pnnclple, 1 e , light always takes the shortest path, in order to provide a s o m e w h a t novel proof of a property of an elhpse rather than adopting a purely geometrical approach, Figure 1 The p r o o f also c o n t a m s a very remarkable ~eloclty diagram, Figure 2, which was published previously by James Clerk Maxwell In his 1877 b o o k Matter and Motion Maxwell attributes the method to Sir William Hamilton, which goes to show how difficult It is to discover something completely o n g m a l F e y n m a n was apparently u n a w a r e of Maxwell's book, b e c a u s e he credits V Fano and L F a n o

with some of the Ideas in their discussions of the Rutherford Scattenng Law in the 1957 b o o k Basic Physws of Atoms and Molecules F e y n m a n shows rather cleverly that, as a result of Kepler's 2nd Law, orbit velocity diagrams subject to an mverse-square law of gravity must be circular The objective of the lecture was for F e y n m a n to prove to his students that elhpt~cal planetary orbits with the s u n at one focus are a direct c o n s e q u e n c e of Newton's reverse-square law However, close i n s p e c t i o n of the book re~eals that n e i t h e r F e y n m a n n o r the Goodstems have truly provided such a proof Nevertheless, the Goodstems present the F e y n m a n lecture as if It did actually c o n t m n a b n l h a n t proof, and this is a very real w e a k n e s s In the lecture given in c h a p t e r 4, F e y n m a n referred repeatedly to his "elementary demonstrations" and "demonstrations " F e y n m a n omits some crucial steps and r e f i n e m e n t s that would have to be Included for his d e m o n s t r a t i o n s to be acceptable as a proof Missing c o m p o n e n t s include 9 an explanation of the scalmg bet w e e n the hodograph velocity diagram and the orbit diagram, 9 a coherent a r g u m e n t why it is justified to use the p e r p e n d i c u l a r bisector of Op (diagram on page 162) to locate the corresponding point, P, on the orbit diagram, w h e n It Is not k n o w n a p r w m that the a n s w e r will turn out to be an ellipse, and, 9 an adequate e x p l a n a t i o n of how par-

abohc and hyperbolic orbits are identified, using the hodograph method, knowing only that the central force obeys an reverse-square law, and that equal areas are swept out m equal time Whilst F e y n m a n did d e m o n s t r a t e the existence of elhptlcal orbit solutions to the problem, what he did n o t demonstrate is the lmlqueness of these solutions Furthermore, he alludes to this situation on page 164 " is what I proved that the ellipse is a possible solution to the p r o b l e m " Unfortunately, F e y m n a n also made other statem e n t s apparently contradicting this view, so we will n e v e r really know how n g o r o u s he believed has lecture to be D u n n g his lecture, F e y n m a n confided to has s t u d e n t s that he had expermnced considerable difficulty with some of the comc-sectlon geometry F e y m n a n states " he [Newton] perpetually uses (for me) completely obscure properties of the conic sections," and " the r e m m n m g d e m o n s t r a t i o n is not one which c o m e s from Newton, because I found I c o u l d n ' t follow it myself very well, b e c a u s e it mvolves so m a n y properties of conic sections So I cooked up a n o t h e r o n e " As it happens, most the proofs in question were o n g m a l l y published in The Conws, Book III by Appolomus, circa 200 B C , a n d all were c o m m o n l y included in books on geometry until the early part of this century, e g, An Elementa~?1

T~eatise On Conic Sectmns By 77~e Methods Of Co-ordinate Geometry by C Smith, MacMillan, 1910 If the conic
section properties were unfamiliar to s o m e o n e with such a ~ast knowledge of mathematics and physms as Feynman, it makes one w o n d e r how n m c h other useful knowledge has been dropped from the m o d e r n curncuhanl in the name of progress Those readers unfamiliar with the f'mer points of Newton's derlxatlons will find that S K Stem's article, "Exactly How Did Newton Deal With His Planets" (The Mathematwal Intell~gence~, ~ol 18, no 2), pro~ades a clear exposition from basic p n n c l p l e s Slrmlarly, readers unfamthar x~lth the use of velocity diagrams or hodographs should refer to Andrew Lenard's paper, "Kepler Orblts--Mo~e Geomeh wo," m

IJ S I

a)
F,gure 2 a) Orb,t D,agram b) Velocity Dmgram

b)

VOLUME20 NUMBER3 1998 69

the College Mathematws Jour~al 25, no 2 (March 1994), which pro~ades an excellent lntroductmn The Goodstems make a n assertion which is not umversally accepted by historians of scmnce " There ~s httle doubt that he [Newton] used these powerflfl tools [differential and integral calculus] to make his great chscovenes" This lmphes that Newton first worked out his solutions usmg the Calculus, and then recast them into a geometrical form Whilst it is true, as R Westfall has pointed out m his defmmve biography of Newton, Neve~ at Rest, that Newton confided to his frmnd Wflham Derhmn that he deliberately made his Prmclpia abstruse " to avoid bemg bmted by httle Smatterers of Mathematxcks ," this apphed to the recasting of Book III of the P~ ~ne~p~a from a prose style to the mathematical format that he subsequently p u b h s h e d This was a result of his clash(es) with Robert Hooke

D T Whites]de has made the point forcibly that the mathematics used by Newton to arrive at his d]scoverms is the same mathematms he used m the

P~nc~pm
It is extremely s a n s f y m g to see that a great physmmt like F e y n m a n was interested sufficiently m the h l s t o n c a l d e v e l o p m e n t of h~s sub3ect that he was p r e p a r e d to devote s l g m f m a n t n i n e to p r e s e n t i n g h~stoncal developments, s u c h as Newton's inversesquare law of gra~qty, to his s t u d e n t s I am c o m a n c e d that u n w e r s m e s will t u r n out b e t t e r educated s c m n n s t s m the future ff they encourage s t u d e n t s to a p p r e c m t e the p r o b l e m s that conf r o n t e d great scientists m the past, and to u n d e ] s t a n d how those s c m n n s t s solved them wath the tools available at the time It must be stud that ff the Goodstems had included an appendax providing a n over~aew of hodograph theory, the edu-

cauonal value of the book would have been greatly e n h a n c e d Nevertheless, this book has been produced to a high quahty and will be a'valuable addition to any library, and is recommended readmg for all students of Newton and Feymnan All the discussions should be readily understood by anyone famlhar with high school mathematms

Acknowledgments
The re~aewer w o u l d hke to acknowledge useful and mformatlve discussions with Professor Robert Burckel (Kansas State) a n d Professor Robert Wemstock ( O b e r h n College) m connection with this rexaew
Control Eng~neenngResearch Centre Oty University Northampton Square London EC1 0HB United Kingdom e-ma~l graham@sastco uk

70

THE MATHEMATICALINTELLIGENCER