Born: 11 May 1918 · Died: 15 February 1988 · Age at death: 69
How old was Richard Feynman when he died?
Richard Feynman died aged 69. He was born on 11 May 1918 and died on 15 February 1988.
American physicist who won the Nobel Prize for quantum electrodynamics, invented Feynman diagrams and was a famous teacher
Did you know?He played the bongo drums and was an artist who sold several of his drawings under a pseudonym.
Quick facts
Date of birth11 May 1918
Date of death15 February 1988
Age at death69
Cause of deathAbdominal cancer
NationalityAmerican
BirthplaceFar Rockaway, United States
Occupationphysicist, quantum physicist, inventor
Editor's Take:
Richard Feynman was one of the most brilliant and colourful physicists of the 20th century. As a young man he worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, where he amused himself by cracking safes. He helped develop quantum electrodynamics, the theory of how light and matter interact. His simple Feynman diagrams changed how physicists calculate. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. On the Challenger disaster inquiry he showed, with a glass of iced water, why an O-ring failed. His lectures and books made physics feel like an adventure.
Key Milestones
1942: Manhattan Project – joins Los Alamos
1948: Feynman diagrams – new method
1961: Feynman Lectures – famous textbook series
1965: Nobel Prize – physics
Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist.
