Richard Feynman Lost Physics — Then a Cafeteria PLATE Brought It Back
After WWII, Feynman was psychologically devastated. Arlene had died of tuberculosis. He had watched the Trinity test — the only person who looked at the blast with his naked eyes. He took a professorship at Cornell but couldn't do research. Physics disgusted him. He was burned out, hollow, going through the motions. Then one day in the Cornell cafeteria, a student threw a plate in the air for fun. Feynman noticed the Cornell red medallion spinning faster than the plate's wobble. He started calculating the relationship — purely for play. He brought the result to Hans Bethe, who said "Feynman, that's pretty interesting, but what's the importance of it?" Feynman said: "There's no importance whatsoever. I'm just doing it for the fun of it." That playful calculation led directly to the work on QED and Feynman diagrams that won him the Nobel Prize.