I'm Roxanne Bogucka and I'd like
to welcome you to Science Study Break
a UT Libraries program where we
evaluate presentations of science in
popular culture. Typically what you
see when you come to one of our
Science Study Break presentations is
the popular culture's usually a TV show
or a movie, but we've been itching to
get into graphic novels for some time.
And we couldn't have asked for a
a better entré to graphic novels than
Jim Ottaviani here this evening.
So first, there are a few housekeeping
things. Here's the legalese.
As you can see, there is a gentleman in
the back who is recording this program
and you'll be able to relive it later
out on YouTube. But if for some
reason, you can't be recorded and
broadcast, then you need to pull your
hoodie up now or something so
you can't be seen. Okay.
We very much thank all of you for
coming out on a Friday evening.
It's wonderful to see such participation
and such interest, and we also thank
our generous sponsors, the University
Federal Credit Union, who has made it
possible for us to do bigger and better
and more programs this year.
Thank you University Federal 
Credit Union.
[applause]
If you're new to Science Study Break,
we are entering our sixth year and
you can see some of the programs
that we've done in the past year.
Things like Mega Monsters with Anne 
Silverman, talking about the mechanical
engineering aspects of Godzilla and
King Kong. We had Sam Scarpino talk
about epidemiology from the point of
view of a zombie outbreak.
Lots of these programs have been 
recorded in the past, and like I said,
you can find them out on 
the YouTube channel.
If you'd like to suggest a Science
Study Break, you might notice
there are some little half sheets on
the arms of your chairs.
That's the feedback form that we'd
like you to fill out before you leave.
There is pencils and pens at the back
if you don't have one, and so
if there is a presenter that you'd think
would be a good candidate for
Science Study Break, or a show or
a graphic novel or a movie that
you would love to see explored,
then do let us know.
Now I want to let you know about
a couple of things that are coming up.
I want to invite you back up next
Wednesday for a program called
Research + Pizza. We have Matt Fajkus
from the School of Architecture, who's
gonna talk about sustainable architecture
design strategies, and this is gonna be
in the UFCU Student Learning Commons
at PCL, at noon on Wednesday.
A smaller event where you can sort of
get into conversation with the researcher
about what's going on. Also, we have
our next Science Study Break 
coming up in October where
Professor Emeritus Claud Bramblett is
going to look at scenes from the
documentary 'Project Nim' and then
from 'Planet of the Apes' movies to
talk about apes, so be there.
If you'd like to follow Science Study 
Break and see about all of our upcoming
events, then you can follow us on 
Twitter @SciStudyBreak or
UT Life Science Library @UTLSL.
You can also follow us on Facebook,
and if you're tweeting tonight,
the hashtag is #ssbfeynman.
It's a good idea to follow us at
some of these places because
not only will you hear about upcoming
programs, but you'll also get details
on the upcoming Science Study Break
t-shirt design contest. Stay tuned.
If you're interested in becoming 
a biographer, you can also use
some of the UT Library resources,
like our databases by type.
You might start with our biographical
sources and see several databases
like Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
might be a place you wanted to go.
Or maybe you would want to look
in the History of Science, Technology
and Medicine for example, so that
you could look up a researcher
and then be pointed to articles 
that you could read, so you too
could follow in the footsteps of
Jim Ottaviani getting started with
resources from the UT Libraries.
So let's talk about Jim Ottaviani,
our guest this evening. 
Jim is a man of hearts.
He has a background in science.
He has a B.S. at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and
a Master's Degree in nuclear engineering
from the University of Michigan.
And then he spent several years
retrofitting and fixing nuclear power
plants, but he was interested in
the research component of his job,
and so he started taking library science
courses at Drexel University to become
a better researcher. And he liked that
well enough that we enrolled in
a library and information science program
at the University of Michigan and
got a master of science and information
and library studies. Then he spent
several years working as a reference
librarian at Michigan's Media Union
library, and now he works at the
University of Michigan library as
coordinator of Deep Blue, which is
the university's institutional repository.
He's written several graphic novels,
and he also recently appeared on
an episode of the Science Channel
show, 'Dark Matters.' Feynman is
his first book, I believe, with
First Second Books. And he has a fourth
coming book about three primatologists,
Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and
Birutė Galdikas. And you should
look forward to that, and you've got
a real treat coming here, so welcome
to Jim Ottaviani.
[applause]
>> Thanks.
Thank you everybody for coming.
It's a Friday night. I'm not sure
I would have done this if I was
a student, but I'm really grateful
that you did, and I'm really pleased
to be in Austin. I've come here
a couple times for library events, but
never been invited to talk about comics.
And comics is something that I like
to talk about a great deal, as those
who have been in some of the classes
and seminars that I've been invited
to attend today can attest to.
So if you've already been to one of
the talks that I've given brief, there
are parts where you can snooze or
get more pizza, and this really good
pizza, whoever decided on this.
I compliment you.
What I'm here to talk about is
Feynman, the book, Feynman,
the person, and more generally, comics,
and specifically why we did what we did
and what we left out in the process
of doing it. So let's get the elephant
out of the room right away. 
Why would Feynman even do this?
Comics about scientists is not the
first thing that comes to mind when
people think about literature or 
even communicating science to
other folks. But I would argue,
obviously I would argue this because
I am who I am, that it's actually very,
very natural to do that. And the
reason I would argue is because
of alchemy. And here is an
alchemical text right here.
It's from one of our favorite alchemists,
Isaac Newton, and you'll notice if you
survey through alchemical texts that
there are A, very few pictures, and B,
a very strong desire to not communicate
[audience laughter] while staking 
a claim to something that is allegedly
very important, but you don't want
to tell anybody about.
Now I'm not gonna argue that this,
a Feynman diagram, named after
the guy that we're all interested in,
is anymore obvious to the average
reader than this thing was.
But the Feynman diagram, as developed
by the subject of the evening, 
is specifically designed to communicate,
to facilitate understanding, and to allow
people to make new discoveries themselves.
And I would say science and imagery have
been related, tied together for many,
many years, in fact starting with
-1700. We've got this cuneiform
tablet, which is demonstrating how to
calculate what? The square root of 2.
And I'm gonna need a cheat sheet for
some of these other images as I roll
through, but here's Copernicus in 1543
demonstrating a new system for
the universe, which got him into
a bit of trouble. Maybe he would have
been better off not using pictures.
From 1570, one of the first pop-up
books ever, and it was designed to
teach geometry. Here is Riccioli,
again, summarizing Copernicus and
post-Copernicus theories on the
universe, and we're now up to 1651.
Here is Isaac Newton again, but this
time, trying to tell you something.
And it actually works quite well.
A guy named Playfair. He is
a practitioner of what many people
think of as the dismal science.
He was an economist, and these
are the first pie charts that have
ever been recorded.
von Humboldt showing the types of
plants that live along the equatorial
plane, and what better demonstration
of how things change with altitude and
with rainfall than to actually show
a cross-section of a mountain by
the equator. We probably all recognize
these finches from Darwin in 1839.
And while I don't have a credit for
this, I do know roughly when
it happened, and I use it specifically
not because it's such a particularly
interesting image, but just to note
that if you take out the figure
numbers and maybe put boxes
around it, you do in fact get comics.
If doesn't have the narrative thrust
or story line that you would expect
maybe from Calvin and Hobbes, 
but it's here right then.
Here is Niels Bohr's hydrogen atom.
He actually proposed the model
initially in 1913, but I was trying to
play fair with the credit for the
actual image here. Here is the
[inaudible] in graphing the big bang
theory and demonstrating how he
thinks the universe started to evolve,
and Edwin Hubble. Here again,
we've almost got a story happening
with this diagram about the evolution
of galaxies. Feynman in 1949, you'll see
this image a lot.
1953, everybody recognizes this notion
of a double helix, and this is Crick's
first sketch of that. And an image
that launched a thousand comic strips
from a guy named Howell because
it's perfect as comics. So we get
this and then we get this,
and actually, this is my favorite.
It's a relatively recent one from
Dan Piraro. [audience laughter]
And the reason I like this is cause
it works regardless of what you believe.
I think it's funny for both sides of
that... It's probably not the discussion.
Well anyway, I think it's funny.
And here finally is a graph of
Moore's law, which I've used to
point out and to tell you that 
the use of images in science is
prevalent and in fact, it's doubling
about every ten years.
That's actually a made up fact.
That's not true, but I wouldn't be
surprised that it actually does
hold for images because when
the going gets rough, and it's often
rough going in terms of scientific
communication, the tough
use pictures. So let's go back
to Moore's law, which he proposed,
and just look at it as it actually is
right now. Which would you rather
use and interpret, this thing or
this thing when it comes to determining
what's going on with semi-conductor
speed and power density in computers?
So I'm pushing a metaphor pretty
hard here. I've gone from actually showing
images. I've actually gone from a
clay tablet to a graph saying this is
all scientific communication using images.
But I don't think it's unfair to do that
because it's all about using something
other than the peer abstraction language
to try to communicate complicated ideas,
both to one's peers and to people who
wouldn't otherwise know anything about
what you're talking about. 
Pictures really do work.
So they work for one other reason 
as well. It's not just that they're comics
or that they're models of the world.
It's because of this word.
It's saccades. And you may think
you're staring at me or staring
judiciously away from me as I try to
make eye contact with you
but you're not. Your eye is moving
at about 70 twitches per second
all over the place. What's happening 
is you're creating a pattern here
with the way you focus when
you look at my face. And I don't
know about you but when I see
something like this and then
I look at the saccade picture of
what's going on, I immediately
leap to that. [audience laughter]
Like it or not, you're making
comics right now. Again,
there's not much story to what
you're doing but I think that's okay.
So now, let me try to deliver
a little bit on the promise that
I made in the initial slide and
start talking about what we did with
Feynman in making the graphic novel
and also particularly what we left out.
How many people here have actually
heard of Richard Feynman before?
A great number, a great number.
So that provides a challenge for
someone who wants to write 
about him in a new way because
the standard narrative that we sort of
develop in our heads once we're
talking about a famous figure is
this notion of a great man born to
greatness who does great things,
the end, he died. And there's really
not much story to that and it's not
much fun to do things this way
because life isn't really like this at all.
It's not linear- that's my first math joke.
It's not parabolic. That's my second
math joke. and except for maybe
Feynman, it's not even hyperbolic.
So what we did when we decided 
we wanted to present the life of Feynman
is actually take a cue from that 
non-linearity, and also a cue from
the way he tended to tell stories about
himself as well in some of his
famous books, particularly 
'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'
And 'What Do You Care What Other
People Think?' And we did it out
of order. So I'm showing you panels
from the book, and these are the
first few scenes exactly as they
appear in the book.
So we start in 1964, just before
he wins the Nobel Prize.
We zip back to 1923 with a sidebar 
into 1986, and with this image,
you can tell that we're not providing
a literal telling of his life, since
that is in fact what you think it is
stomping through Far Rockaway, New York.
Then we zip over to 1987 and all of
a sudden, we've got a much older
Feynman interacting with dinosaurs,
back to 1927 where he is a young man,
about ten years old. Then we zip
past the Nobel Prize to him giving
his speech in Far Rockaway, talking
about what he had done, and then
to 1931, when he's about to meet
his wife-to-be, and I say this all
by way of introducing the notion
that we have- whoops.
That always happens on the next slide.
I don't know why I did that.
Introducing this notion of
non-linearity to the storytelling,
to provide some type of narrative
thrust. And Feynman said this about-
and this is from his Nobel lecture that
we gave in Sweden, not the one at
his high school. We have this habit 
of doing things that we cover all our
tracks and make it super polished.
So this is the famous article that
introduced those Feynman diagrams,
and everything is laid out nice and neat.
The blocks and textures are square.
The prose is very precise.
And Feynman didn't want to do it
that way all the time. So in fact,
this is another bit from his speech to
the Nobel audience saying that
he's gonna include some stuff that
really has nothing to do with the
science but is there to be more
entertaining. Because Feynman knew
something that a lot of us forget
soon after we stop reading for pleasure.
Right about freshman year in college,
I think, which is that stories are what
make learning worthwhile in large part.
And in fact, stories aid learning
a great deal.
So that meant in doing this, in taking
Feynman's advice about dealing with
the physics when talking to a broad
audience, maybe not at all or as only
part of the story, that means that
here, when we're showing Feynman
working out the theory of helium in
the book, we're telling more of a story
than showing so much about what
he actually did with this. And it's
Feynman himself remembering 
the setting, the way the desk looked,
but what he was trying to get at
was this sort of emotional state.
And Feynman was a very precise
scientific kind of guy, so I'm translating
psychological condition to emotional
state. But he was actually very
interested in this, and trying to figure
out how he got to discover this
one beautiful fact that he was 
convinced he was the only person
in the universe to know at the time.
And what Feynman does is try to
remember that he got to a certain
point, and then he backed off in his
discovery and said, let me look at
all the facts again and just tap it
a little bit. Tap it lightly and maybe
it'll crystallize for me.
Now Leland and I obviously tried to
mess around with this notion because
we didn't really believe Feynman just
tapped it. He wasn't the kind of guy
to tap anything. He dove in head
first. So he had to decide between
that tap and this bonk that he's
doing against the side of the panel.
But for the most part, in the book
any way, we tapped at the physics
very lightly because we were very
interested in telling a story of this
man's life that included science
but wasn't just science.
In part because if you're gonna show
the life of a theoretical physicist,
you'd have panels like this. 
In fact, you'd have tiers of panels
like this, and maybe even pages of
panels like this all the way.
And you know, that's nice for
a presentation, but I'm not sure
anybody would actually buy a book
that was 260 pages straight of that
nonsense, so we left out a lot
unfortunately. What we left in,
and here's a quote from Feynman.
People love how-to. If you're going to
say crack a safe, and people who know
about Feynman know that he was
in fact a safe cracker as a hobby,
especially during his time at
Los Alamos, while working on the first
atomic bomb. They're really interested
in knowing how to do it. So he said
so himself, except actually I'm lying
here again. This is not Feynman.
This is George Roy Hill, the director
for "Butch Cassidy and 
The Sundance Kid," "The Sting"
and many other things. 
But I've normalized Hill's language
a little bit to actually match something
that Feynman did say, because
he agrees with Hill about storytelling,
and it's that people really do love
to learn. And I think we're all here
because of that. People love to learn
and in Feynman's original quote,
he put square quotes around
entertained, but I like it without
so... And I'm giving the presentation
and he's not, so I left them out to
be straight forward.
They're entertained enormously by
being allowed to understand a little bit,
of something they didn't understand
before. Feynman knew this about
telling stories and about teaching.
And that's why when the YouTube
videos that Roxanne was showing
as people were filing in, you know this.
That he was often just telling a
story while he was also slipping in
a very serious lecture about what's
noble and un-noble in science
for instance. So we did tell
a little bit about Feynman's
work on quantum electrodynamics
with Feynman being very satisfied
that QED's does in fact explain
how mirrors work. Very good.
And we show him talking about
how to do these sorts of thought
experiments and calculations
in his head. So I'm just gonna
zip through here. I'm not gonna
expect you to actually read
anything. But notice that if you've
ever watched him lecture in his
show, there are plenty of opportunities
to see him YouTube, you'll see that
he was a very visual person,
very demonstrative, a lot of gestures.
But we didn't have to leave a lot
of stuff out even so, even when
we just got to the story of his life.
And there have actually been some
criticisms of the book that
I've read, some of them very good,
which I've like, 'Jack, don't do that
next time on the next graphic novel.'
But some of those criticisms have
focused on the fact that Feynman
was a great writer himself, or at least
a great storyteller from which other
people would transcribe his writing.
And you can learn a lot and see a lot
just by reading Feynman's own
words, and some people have said
there is way too much of these
two books in our book about Feynman.
And this actually makes me very happy
because I'm the kind of guy I am.
I've done the math, and that's about
how much of any of those books is in
our book. There was so much to 
leave out, so when people- oops. Sorry.
Never do that.
So when people are saying, I got a feel
for Feynman just a way I got from
those books, like Feynman talking
about his own lectures, you know.
I'm not dissatisfied with being
criticized for sounding too much
like Feynman in there. So this is
actually what we did leave out from
those two really popular books. 
And I know the print is too small
so that you can't really read it.
But you should read those.
'Surely You're Joking' and 'What Do You
Care What Other People Think?'
If only to read 'Hotel City' and 
'Any Questions?'
So why did we leave all of this 
stuff out?
And here again, I fall to Feynman to
guide me in what I should have done.
This is a quote from a letter that 
he wrote to a German publisher after
his very first book came out, 
'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'
And the German publisher who wanted
to do a translated edition had contacted
Feynman saying, you know, look.
This is a great book. It's a best-seller
in the United States and I know 
it's doing well all over the world.
And we're putting together a German
edition, but the translator and I have
decided that there are some pieces
of the book that are just not
important for the German reader,
and we would like to remove those.
And Feynman replied with a very
strongly worded letter, and this is
some of the nicest things he said
to that publisher. Basically saying
look. If you want to have only the
important stuff, you have to take it
all away, because none of it's 
important. It's not even an
autobiography. It's just have a bunch
of stuff that I thought people would
find amusing. So Feynman knew,
it had to teach me and Leland that
a bunch of stories is not the same
as a story. So we did leave some
things out from the book, from his
personal life as well. There was
a period in his life where he was
not particularly happy in his
personal relationships. He had
a second marriage that did not
go well and did not last long.
And here is a scene from that
marriage, one of the few that
we show, where his somewhat
clueless partner at the time says,
this old bore called for you.
And the physics majors probably
have already gotten the joke.
This is a man named Niels Bohr,
the founder of quantum mechanics.
And Feynman says, wait-wait a minute.
Which is it? An old bore or the old bore?
And as you can see, his wife didn't
really see the difference and there is
a major one with that. And this is one
of many, and this is sort of a trivial
humorous example of why that marriage
didn't work out particularly well.
So we left a lot of that stuff away
and we did this why? Because I think
Tolstoy was wrong. And what I'm saying
about Tolstoy is there's a very famous
line from the beginning of 'Anna 
Karenina,' which again, I'm gonna read
so that I don't misquote it.
And it's this: "All happy families are 
alike, each unhappy family is unhappy
"in its own way." And that's a great
opening line for a book, but it's not
the story of Feynman's life I don't 
think, because the real story of
Feynman's life was how he started
with a very happy family.
The family he was born into.
His mother, his father, his sister Joan
who also became a scientist.
Then another happy family that
he created with his first wife, Arline,
and she was very ill at the time
they married. Then there's this period
where it's not so great, but then
he rebounds and creates the ultimate,
as in the final one that he needs,
happy family with his third wife 
Gweneth, and his son Carl and his
daughter Michelle. And that's the
story we really, really wanted to tell.
And again, we left a little bit of the
science in, but Feynman's impact
and career was so vast that we had
to leave most of that out.
And this time, we left it out because
Feynman's cabbie was right about
his science. In that there was a
situation soon after he won the
Noble prize. He's getting interviewed
on TV as Nobel Prize winners do.
And as TV interviewers tend to do,
'Tell me in as short a time as possible
'why you won the Nobel Prize for
Physics.' And Feynman had been
struggling with this. He was failing
on TV, and Feynman was not a guy
who was used to failing. He was
struggling with this and he couldn't
figure out why. And finally, a cab
driver delivered to him the answer why.
And this is one of a relatively few
number of times where Feynman
makes himself look a little bit bad
in a story, just because it's way
funnier to make sure that you
get the cab driver to deliver
the good line and not Feynman
himself, so...
What would Feynman think about
doing a graphic novel about himself?
That's something that was running
through my mind the whole time
I was researching it and writing it.
And even more so while Leland,
the artist, was spending the roughly
two years it took him to draw the
darn thing. And I'm still not 100% sure
but there's an instance from Feynman's
life. It comes relatively late in his life
in fact that I think provides a little
bit of guidance of what Feynman
would actually think about this
nonsense over here.
Here's the context. His kids are,
I think ten and six, something like that.
His friend Ralph Leighton is over
for dinner that evening and
they're finishing up the meal and
as often happens in elementary school
and in middle school, quizzing the kids
on what they learned today.
There was this geography thing and
we're learning the capitals of the
various countries and stuff like that.
And Feynman said, 'Did you learn
about Tuva?' And this is early
eighties I believe. And so the
Soviet Union is still fully functional.
Well, as functional as the Soviet Union
ever was. And everybody at the table
says, Tuva? There couldn't be any
such place. That's a really goofy name.
Feynman of course knew, because
he had been a stamp collector when
he was a little kid, and he had gotten
some Tuvan stamps and they're really
neat looking. They're big triangles and
big diamonds and they're really nice
engraving and cool colors.
So he knew Tuva existed. They pull out
the atlas and they're looking for Tuva
and there, they find it, right in the 
middle of Soviet Russia.
And they're poking around because
they've been talking about capitals
and they find the capital name, 
and it's Kyzyl, K Y Z Y L.
And everybody looks up and says,
any place that has a capital that
has no real vowels in it has got
to be an interesting place to go.
So they decide right then and 
there that they want to go to Tuva.
The whole family does. And so
Feynman and his friend Ralph
start trying to make this happen.
The first thing they do is send
a note to Intourist, which was the
official Soviet Union tourist agency
who would respond politely but
firmly that Kyzyl is impossible to visit.
I'm sorry, there's just no 
way to get there.
It's in a forbidden zone or something.
And as you can imagine, Feynman was
cool with that and they said, oh,
we'll do something else.
No, he wasn't cool with that
at all. He's gonna decide along
with Ralph and Gweneth and 
everybody how to get to Kyzyl.
And that's the context for this clip,
and that's a really long prelude to
what would Feynman think about
doing a graphic novel about science?
So here's Feynman.
>> It's very simple: I propose to
do some lectures in Russia.
They would be delighted, I think.
[audience laughter]
I come there and I say that one of
the conditions is that I travel to Tuva.
And they say indeed, it's fine.
[audience laughter]
And then I say... But I do the lectures
in Moscow, after I visit Tuva.
[audience laughter] You see?
And they'll have to say yes to that.
>> So while you were laughing,
he said, 'Having learned a little bit,
'you see?' So here's Feynman.
And I would argue that he's doing
science right here. I've got a theory,
and I can in fact do a gedankenexperiment-
I did it again.
A thought experiment, and see how things
might play out with my theory.
I say I want to go to Tuva. They say
great, sure Dr. Feynman.
I say I'll give some lectures in Moscow.
They say, even better. Come on over.
We'll pay your expenses.
And then I say, I give the lectures after
I get to the place that I really want to
go to, and then they're stuck.
If it's not science, it's at least 
engineering right? [audience laughter]
So he's got that going.
>> I never understood before why 
I don't want to do it that way.
And now I suddenly do. The whole 
idea is to have adventure.
The way to have adventure is to do
things at a lower level, not to ride
on the freeway and to stop at 
the Holiday Inn!
>> So he had science in his hands.
I would argue here that he's saying
I'd rather art in this case.
So what would Feynman think about
our sacrificing a little bit of truth?
Leaving some stuff out of the book
in favor of getting a little better
story out of it? Well I don't really
know because Feynman's been dead
unfortunately for quite a while.
But I have my best guess and
I hope I'm right. That's all I've got
for the formal bit. I'd love to hear
from you. [applause]
Yeah? You were the first hand up.
>> What graphic novels are you 
interested in? [inaudible]
>> Oh my goodness. I was asked this
question at the among the librarians
today and I choked on it, and 
I'm probably still gonna check.
Their actual question was what are
you reading right now? And the book
that was right by my bed is a book called
'Infinite Kung Fu' by Kagan McLeod.
[audience laughter]
Not really high brow but it is fantastic.
I'm really enjoying it.
I read quite a number of graphic
novels. The ones that have made
the most impact on me have tended
to be the true stories or things that
have really challenged the boundaries
of a particular genre. So you think of
a book like 'Watchmen.'
You think of a book like "Maus" by
Art Spiegelman. "Watchmen" was by
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. 
"Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi is one.
"Fun Home" by Alison Bechdel.
I can just go on and on, there are
so many good things.
I was speaking to some elementary
school kids a couple days ago at
Los Alamos and I wanted to remind
them that when their parents say
the good old days were better,
they may have been right about
some things but they're totally
wrong about comics because
this is much better environment
for reading comics than it was when
I was a kid. There are so many more
types of books. Oh, I just thought
about Joe Sacco's "Safe Area Goražde."
I do nonfiction comics all the time
and people have said, oh that's so
admirable. It's wonderful.
Joe Sacco gets shot at in Bosnia and
imprisoned in Palestine to do this
comic reporting. That's actually
admirable. The paper cut I got in
the Caltech Archives is not- 
doesn't stack up.
Oh yes, thank you.
>> What is the process of creating
a graphic novel like?
>> Maybe I can shutter all the way
back to that issue of sitting and
thinking, over and over again.
But you meant something different,
so I should actually honestly answer
your question rather than fool
around with it. The way I do it,
leaving aside the research part,
which you could probably imagine
what that is in fact like, reading
lots of books, listening to lots of
audio to get his voice working 
inside my head so that when
I'm typing dialogue, it has the
flavor of Feynman's cadence
and things like that. Leaving aside
all those things, what I... The way
it starts for me anyway is- again,
I'm gonna make this up because
I don't always start at the very
beginning when I write, but it's
page one, panel one. Jim is in
the auditorium at UT Austin.
He is wearing a black shirt and
sort of olive green-y pants.
There's a whole bunch of people
here. Some of them are here just
for the pizza but that's cool.
And you actually do put that sort of
thing in a script because you want to
give the artist a feel for the setting,
not just the facts of the setting.
But then I would describe the way
the building looks or the way
the interior of the building looks,
and then go on to say, 'and Feynman
says this' or Joan, his sister says that,
and on and on and on. I tend to
specify page breaks because in comics,
there is this very interesting phenomenon
that you can hide stuff from readers
by hiding it behind an even numbered page.
So if you want a surprise to happen,
you put it at the top of an odd numbered
page so that when you turn the next
page, you can't skim and see the surprise
until you've turned it again,
sort of thing. And so it's very detailed,
very specific, when I'm asking for
a tricky layout of panels, if it's not
just gonna be a grid of nine squares
or whatever. Sometimes I'll sketch
that out for an artist, and if it's gonna
be a particular composition within
those panels or frames, sometimes
I'll sketch that out myself.
In stick figure form, I'm not a very
good artist, but I need to be able to
demonstrate at least to myself that
what I've asked for is in fact
drawable, because we could 
describe this auditorium in great detail
and it would take maybe a paragraph
to get a pretty good sense of that.
But then asking an artist to realize
that in a single image is very difficult
and so sometimes when I have
a question in my head of whether
what I have asked for is in fact
possible, I'll try to sketch it myself.
And if I can't sketch it even in stick
figure form, I've got to start again
and come up with something 
that's good. Then, off it goes to
the artist. And depending on the 
type of project and the amount
of trust, mutual trust we have,
sometimes there's very little
interaction. And in fact, that was
the case with Feynman.
Leland and I talked very rarely while
he was working on the book.
But I knew his work, and I knew 
his story editor was excellent so
I would have just been in the way
if I- You know, I'd said my peace with
this 280 page script and if he has
questions, he'll ask me.
And then you go from there.
Sometimes it's much more interactive.
Is that the sort of thing you wanted
to hear about? Yeah, great. Yeah?
>> Do you think you could write
a graphic novel on any other scientist
[inaudible]
>> You asked a loaded question.
Could I write a graphic novel about
any other scientist?
>> If you were to write a graphic novel
on another scientist, do you think
it would still be as stimulating to read
or do you think that this work is unique?
>> Oh, good question, if it would be
as good. So I've written a graphic novel
about Niels Bohr, my other physics hero.
I don't know if it's as stimulating.
I certainly had fun doing it.
I think it's up to...
It's more on me than it is on 
the character because if there's
enough in a character, Niels Bohr,
Jane Goodall, Alan Turing,
I'm cherry picking because these
are all people I've written about
or am in the process of completing
a book on. There's something to
their lives that attracted me in
the first place. And I'm convinced
that I can carry it through visually.
So I'm sure there is somebody that's
just so horribly boring that it wouldn't
be worth doing, but you'd probably
learn that in the course of the 
research before you even got
to the point of handing the script
off to the artist. I hope so, anyway
I saw a- yeah.
>> [inaudible]
If you were to do an e-book version of
this, [inaudible]
would that book look quite differently
[inaudible]
>> Yes, I think it would. I think an
e-book version of this might indeed
look very different, and if I was
designing something to be initially
presented in electronic form or on
the web, I would do different things.
Funny you should mention this.
I just finished writing a script for
a story about Alan Turing, the
mathematician and computer scientist
who also worked as a code breaker
during World War II. And its initial
publication will be on the web via
the science fiction company Tor, Tor.com.
And it's gonna be a while, so you'll
probably forget. Although this is
being recorded right? So... 
[audience laughter]
But I had one panel, one page, 
run continuously sideways for
dozens and dozens and dozens
of panels to get a point across.
And so when you're gonna experience
that on the web or on the iPad,
you're gonna be doing this constantly
rather than up and down. So yes,
once you know that that's gonna
happen, you can do some very
different and I hope interesting
things. This book was originally
designed to be printed and shown
in you know, this sort of standard
page format. So stuck with that
in terms of the story telling choices,
but again. You're absolutely right.
Once you know you can do something
different, as soon as I knew it was
gonna be serialized, I changed
the way I thought about how I might
want to tell the story to get some of
these really interesting effects.
I hope it's interesting.
It may just end up being annoying
for the reading to go sideways
constantly. We'll find out.
And right- yeah, right in 
front of him. Yeah.
>> I was wondering what's the
significance of the punch line.
"This is the smartest man on Earth,
God help us."
>> Well if you open up the jacket flap,
you'll find out who said it and
that's the significance. It's no
secret. It's not giving away anything
in the book. That was his mom.
[audience laughter]
So that's why we used that.
I was actually a little dicey on
using that quote. It's a little bit
too irreverent for my taste but
people seem to like it. I'm often
wrong about marketing decisions.
Way in the back.
>> I was wondering what is your
favorite person that you've written about
and what makes them your favorite?
>> My favorite person that I've written
about? Well it does remain a tie between
Niels Bohr, my one physics hero,
so much of a favorite that I named
my cat Niels, and Richard Feynman.
Niels, my cat, is not really all
that smart, so.
[audience laughing]
But yeah, I think it would be 
those two people, would be
"A" number one, but the sort of cheesy
authorey answer that is actually
also true- I'll wait so you can
catch the t-shirt.
The sort of cop-out sounding
author answer is the person
I'm working on because what
you find out, even when there are
scoundrels, and I wrote a book
about early paleontologists,
Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel
Charles Marsh, and these guys were
not good guys. If you spend enough
time trying to be inside their heads
so you can get them to act out 
the story that you want to see
on the page, their life story, you 
kind of end up liking them anyway.
And so all of the characters start to
become sympathetic, and I think if
you talk to any writer of biography or
of novels, you'll hear a very similar
reaction in that, I spent so much time
with this person even though
it's a biography of, you know,
pick your favorite evil or mean person.
I found I sympathize at least a little bit
with some of what happened in
their lives or some of the things
they did because you do spend
all that time with them, and like
I said, trying to get inside their head.
Yes?
>> [inaudible] how do you think of
the relationship between [inaudible]
>> I'm not sure I got the last part
of the question, but let me answer
the first part first. So the question
as, Feynman was a multi-faceted person.
He was particularly a musician and
an artist, and what do I think about
why that occurred or how that
occurred? Is that right?
>> [inaudible]
>> And he had so- Feynman, in particular,
appeared to have so much energy
and so much joy of life. He was just
fundamentally interested in the world
as a whole. And I think that's part of
what made him a great scientist,
is his curiosity, his interest in trying
new things and seeing how they worked
and it led him in that Nobel lecture
I showed a panel from the very
beginning of the book where he's talking
to his high school. In that scene,
he tells how he was miserable at
many, many subjects, which he was
now trying to correct in his adulthood.
He was trying to learn more languages.
He was trying to learn to draw,
and I think this desire to learn and
to experience more was fundamental
to what made him great.
So what was the second question?
I missed it.
>> [inaudible]
>> Oh, the relationship between 
scientist and artist. I think...
I think it might be this.
The ability to focus on a problem,
whether it's a problem of composition
or a problem of physics, and then 
concentrate your energies on it,
and then, at the same time, 
be extremely creative in the way
you think or the way you approach it.
There's a quote from Feynman that
I sometimes use. "The game I play is 
a very interesting one.
"It's imagination, in a tight straight jacket."
And being able to imagine fully, within
the constraints of what you know and
what you can do is a skill or a gift,
maybe, that not many of us have,
to imagine all the possibilities,
try out many of them in their heads
and then apply the ones that seem
the most promising. And to me,
anyway, I think that's how the sciences
and the arts relate. They're just
applied into different realms.
Yes, I saw you. You like held
your hand up the whole time.
>> [inaudible]
[audience laughter]
>> I have not contemplated that.
It's a little too easy, so if I were
gonna do it, I would probably
name it Erwin instead just to be
slightly obscure. You're the 
next person I saw, sorry.
>> I was curious if you got into
graphic novels and comics specifically
to explain science or you had prior
interest in it as a kid maybe,
in comics in general?
>> Yeah, I certainly enjoyed reading
comics most of my life. I wasn't
much of a comic book reader until
college, but I certainly read the
comic strips. You know, Calvin and
Hobbes, Peanuts, Doonesbury,
all these things. I got interested in
applying them to science once
I realized that nobody else was
gonna do it. And I knew all these
great- you know. The Galileo story,
it's an amazing story! Not all that
many people know it. Feynman's
story is an amazing story.
The story Hedy Lamarr, the film star
who is responsible for the cellphone
technology that's in your pocket
right now. Amazing story!
But these are things that not a lot of
people knew. Some people will only
approach storytelling through comics,
so I wanted to see if maybe I could
get these out there for them. 
And there was someone right here, yeah.
>> [inaudible] to that end, your audiences
have [inaudible] and the intent on
taking it down to the lower level to
inspire younger students and children
to be involved in the sciences 
[inaudible]
Yes, right. So I'm glad you pointed out
the audience that I'm seeing here.
If I had given this talk fifteen 
years ago, there probably would be
two women in the room, as 
comics readers anyway.
There would be more than that
as physicists. But as people who
had read comics before, there
would be very few. This room kind of
looks like the rest of the world,
which is not what I'm used to
coming from comic book conventions,
which is kind of nice. [audience laughter]
To go to the younger reader level,
the answer is yes. So the book
I did just previous to Feynman was
a book called 'T-Minus.'
It was about the space race and
it was targeted at say, the eight
to twelve year old age range. 
My friend and the artist for
the book, Zander Cannon, he and I-
and Kevin Cannon also worked on
the book, and they're not related but
they share a studio. Zander and I
decided very early on that we were
gonna make these ten year olds
bring their a-game to the book.
So it's a little bit of a higher level,
so much so that it got more reviews
like in the mainstream press, like
the New York Times than it did in
the School Library Journal, which
didn't bum me out, but it was just
sort of interesting. So yes to that.
And the book about Jane Goodall,
Dian Fossey and Birutė Galdikas is
specifically targeted at the ten to
twelve year old girl audience.
So I needed a lot of help from my
editors to do that because
I've never really- it's a very different
type of storytelling. But I handed in
the first draft to Calista, and she said,
that's very nice. I think you've got
the story structure great and all
the facts are down and it looks good.
Where's the emotion?
And the nuclear engineer in me,
emotion?! What do you mean?
And she said, remember your
audience. These are kids.
And one of the main ways,
they're just approaching adulthood
and they're feeling stuff really
strongly. And it's almost overwhelming
for that ten to twelve year old 
age range. And I start,
yeah. I guess I remember that
sort of thing going on.
So she has helped me rework
that to better fit the audience.
I'm probably not the greatest 
person to be doing this though,
hence, the 'emotion?!' sort of
response. But yeah.
We're definitely hoping for that
in the very next book.
The Alan Turing book is very
much not gonna be for young kids.
There is- you know, as they say in
the PG-13 in movies, adult themes
to it. It's a PG-13 book basically, 
but PG-13 does not mean ten.
Especially in the comics. 
Yes?
>> My question is [inaudible]
graphic novels [inaudible]
>> I don't worry that this will make
people think they're geekier because
I look at the depiction of scientists
in most other popular media and
feel pretty good about the way-
I'm sorry. That really sounds
horribly arrogant. [audience laughter]
But when you look at the stereotypical
scientist, I mean-
I love 'The Big Bang Theory,' 
that's a very entertaining show.
But I don't think it's putting scientists
in the best light. [audience laughter]
And I think I have more latitude to
do things a little bit more balanced
and show Feynman as a truly
happy family man for instance,
and someone who is interested 
in art and interested in music
and all those things. So I hope
it's not having an effect counter
to my purpose. I don't really know.
Not enough data.
We need to commission a study
or something. Yeah, I haven't looked
over this way in a while.
And with the Feynman t-shirt,
so you gotta...
>> Yeah. What's your favorite Feynman
quote and short story?
This one's mine.
>> My favorite Feynman quote...
>> I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
>> Yeah you did. 
[audience laughter]
But I don't think I can do it.
There are so many. I mean
I included a great number of
them in this. And actually, we didn't-
Sometimes, when we don't have
nice video like Roxanne was able
to provide, I run a slideshow in front
of this. And maybe it's the one,
and it's too long a quote for me
to remember exactly, but it's about
him as he's lecturing about quantum
electrodynamics to a popular audience
and says, I can see you shaking your
heads saying I don't understand.
I can see you shaking your heads
saying I don't like it. Tough.
I don't understand it either,
I don't like it either.
But that's the way nature is.
And I think that's a really good
summation at least. It may not
be the best Feynman quote
'cause you know, I will be walking
home back to the hotel room tonight
and I will "oh, the thing 
I should have said..."
>> The taxi driver woke up.
>> Hahaha. Bravo. Yes, sir.
>> I guess my question is 
Feynman is an communicator
and he offer the audience with
different points of view which is
part of the reason why he is so great.
>> Yes.
>> ... scientific pursuits. So I guess my
question was really did your graphic novel
actually convey that sense of 
(inaudible) to the reader,
that he was that kind of extravagant 
figure who view things from different
perspectives?
>> I hope so. I hope so.
The scenes about, the scenes where
we show Feynman initially presenting
his ideas on QED and the skepticism
and difficulty that other physicists had
with wrapping their heads around
the way Feynman did it because
it was so different from the way
Schrödinger and Tomonaga,
the two people who shared the Nobel
prize with Feynman for these discoveries.
Very different formulation. Turns
out that Feynman is the one that is
very commonly used now because
it's so powerful and I think because
it's visual. So I hope so. Like I said,
but that's, I am, you know, I am sort
of soaken into it at this point and
I can't tell whether it's good or bad.
Yeah, way in the back. So people are 
pointing at this person to ... okay.
>> How was the process of writing
the stuff will expand your understanding
of Feynman the person as you would
Feynman as a physicist?
>> The process of writing, I think 
I described it a little bit when we were
talking about heroes and villains
sort of thing and learning to sympathize
with folks.
Let me sort of hark back to 
the research stage and getting to go
into the basement of Cal Tech where
Feynman's papers actually are
and reading some of his original
letters and some very personal things.
Feynman has sort of achieve this
god-like status, especially among
physicist but Freeman Dyson just
argued in an article he wrote
that maybe among the general population
as well and I felt that way about him.
I think he was, I can't remember,
Sasha maybe you can give...
who said about Feynman that he was
not an ordinary genius?
Okay, so physicists who knew him,
let's pretend that it's John Wheeler,
his thesis adviser said this.
It's probably not true.
But there are geniuses that you know
and you imagine yourself, if I just
work a little harder, was just a little 
bit brighter, a little bit more focused,
had a little bit clear vision of where
I wanted to go, I can be that person.
And then there is Feynman, which 
you know, nobody could see how to
make the leap to some of the things
that he did. Given that he was that
type of person, the fact that he started
to feel very real, very human, very flawed
in a number of ways, I think that's
the most important change of
my perspective, is he really got
human...he became much more
human the more I learnt about him
and the more I admired about what
he had accomplished. So they weren't
mutually exclusive. I admired him more
and he became more human and
I think that's really cool.
>> Apparently it's Hans Bethe.
>> Hans Bethe. Thank you.
Hans Bethe said that about Feynman,
that he was an ordinary genius.
Roxanne, would you like me to call
on someone particular?
>> I think her.
>> Okay. Hi.
>> I was wondering what is research
process with Feynman. What kind of
sources do you look at? How long
does that take you to get all that done?
>> Yeah so I have been, the research
process looks very much like what you
were taught maybe in high school
or now in college. It's mostly reading
a lot of books.
But with Feynman there was, he was
fairly well documented guy, both by
himself and by others because he was
an interesting person to know so people
like to write about him.
So there was also a fair amount of video
to look at, not dramatizations of his life
so much. In fact, I would specifically
want to avoid those things so that
I can tell the story without stealing
from somebody else inadvertently.
But watching him lecture, to see
his physical style, to see the way
he dressed, was important and
we cheated in one significant way
on the way he was dressed and
we found this out later. We didn't
realize it at the time so I am gonna
do a little digression here to answering
your question.
Leland depicted Feynman 
all the way through the book
with his sleeve rolled up and
when Carl Feynman saw
the images, the Feynman images,
he goes, "you know, my dad really
never had his sleeve rolled up at all.
Go back and look at the reference photos."
We looked and it's like, er, you are 
right. And then Leland is like "you are
not gonna make me redraw 260 pages
to roll down the cuffs right?"
And we made our peace with this 
akin to a superhero costume.
Feynman's costume is his sleeves 
are rolled up because he is a guy
who dives in hands first and really
gets him dirty and works physically.
So end of digression. Research process.
Reading a lot of books, watching
videos to get his mannerism and
get his speech patterns down,
listening to a lot of audio.
But the most precious stuff
is talking to people like Ralph Leighton
who knew him well and then going
to those original papers in the archives
to see the things that didn't make it
into some of the other published
books. My favorite bit was that
speech that I showed very early on,
his second Nobel prize speech is
what I call it, to his high school.
I've never seen that published before
and there are gems in there and
they are particularly great because
he talks about his high school career
which he didn't in any of his other books
so I learnt lots of new and interesting
names and new and interesting facts
and it was just a fun speech to go.
So if you are gonna do something
like this, see if you can dive into
the primary sources as soon as
you feel ready to or if you can find them
because that's where the stuff that will
set in just a little bit apart from say
the other biographies. Yeah.
I have time for one more.
Then you gotta pick.
>> (inaudible)
>> You made me.
>> (inaudible)
>> I was just gonna ask
is there anything you found out about
Feynman while you are researching him
is like really surprise you, like blow
you away, anything like that?
>> (sigh) I was surprised, haha, 
I am not gonna give you the full
answer here because this is stuff
that we left out of the book but
I was surprised that some of 
the letters he saved.
>> Okay.
>> And he actually donated to the archives
so that that means the challenge 
to you is to now go to the Cal Tech
archives and look through his personal
correspondence and see what was
in there that surprised me.
>> Alright.
>> But he kept a lot of stuff. It's 
actually a little bit too bad these
days that we communicate so 
readily and so frequently in
ephemeral ways, texting, email,
Twitter. I don't think a lot of
people are saving that stuff so
the future me's are gonna have
a tougher time doing research.
I guess it's a last call.
(laughter).
So... (audience claps)
Thank you very much.
