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What Do You Care What Other People Think? by Ralph Leighton, Richard P. Feynman

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What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character is an autobiographical collection of stories, photographs, letters and other bits of reminiscence from the life of Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist. It was written as a sequel to his earlier book Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

Feynman wrote numerous textbooks and materials relating to his work in physics, but his first  foray into the world of popular publication was with his book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! in 1985, just three years before his death. Part memoir, part commentary on Feynman’s many interests and expertise, some of the earlier book is devoted his own comic musings on life and his own trivial pastimes, while the rest covers the Manhattan Project and the death of his first wife, Arline Greenbaum, to tuberculosis. What Do You Care What Other People Think? is a continuation of the prequel, but in a less-structured format. It contains anecdotes, notes, photographs, letters and even some artistic drawings done by Feynman later in life. It was written in 1988—the year of Feynman’s death—during his struggle with terminal cancer. The title is taken from something his late wife used to say to him. He said that whenever he would come home from work tired or discouraged, worried about what his coworkers or students thought about him and his work she would ask, “Why do you care what other people think?”

"By the evidence of this book alone, it is clear that [Feynman] was an original, brilliant, curious, energetic, eclectic, ebullient, gregarious, and consummately iconoclastic human being with a passion for science, a taste for first principles, and a view of reality that was uniquely his. When he discusses what he really loved, his natural genius shines through." —Washington Post

Richard Feynman has been recognized for his many and varied contributions to the world of science, leading to a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. But it was for his work on the Manhattan Project and later the Rogers Commission that would catapult him into the realm of world fame. The Manhattan Project was a group of scientists assigned the task of developing an atomic weapon in a race against Nazi Germany. Feynman was recruited young, just out of college, but his impressive work led to his being made a group leader in the project. Later he would do work for the Rogers Commission, a panel of experts assembled to discover the cause of the NASA space shuttle Challenger incident. There, Feynman would become known as the scientist who originally proposed the theory later proven to be the actual cause of the explosion, thereby leading to many innovations in space shuttle design and safety improvements.