Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

The Atomic Age dates from the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945 to the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. Some scholars date the beginning of the period to the discovery of subatomic particles in the 1920s. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! was published in 1985, near the end of the Atomic Age. Feynman’s memoir reflects both, implicitly and explicitly, several central Atomic Ages beliefs about science, culture, and politics.

During the Atomic Age, nuclear physics developed as an important field of science and engineering. Humans were beginning to unravel the mysteries of the building blocks of matter. Feynman points out that, during the 1930s, nobody really knew what a physicist did, but that perception changed over the next decades, corresponding to Feynman’s career and intellectual development. Physicists gained a broad, if ill-defined, reputation as cutting-edge thinkers, who understood the newest and most complex discoveries. The idiom “I’m no rocket scientist” meaning “I’m not that intelligent” came into origin during the Atomic Age and derived its meaning from the reverence for physics.

Atomic energy led to both optimism and dread. Nuclear fission controlled for peaceful purposes seemed to offer an inexhaustible source of energy that could fuel economic prosperity.