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The Feynman Lectures on Computation

Tony Hey, Robin Allen

Published Jan 1, 1996• 284 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

When, in 1984–86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a “Feynmanesque” overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.

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When, in 1984–86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a “Feynmanesque” overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.
When, in 1984?86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a ?Feynmanesque? overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.
The last lecture course that Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman gave to students at Caltech was not on physics but on computer science. The course in 1983 was an overview of standard and not-so-standard topics in computer science, all given in Feynman’s inimitable style. This talk will begin by giving an overview of Feynman’s long-time interest in computing - starting with his time at Los Alamos during the war through to his suggestion of simulating physics on a quantum computer at a ‘Physics of Computation Conference at MIT in 1981 and his acting as a consultant for the parallel computer company, Thinking Machines. The talk will conclude with a summary of Feynman’s long-term interest in the physical limits to computation and the exemplary way he could communicate complex ideas to all types of audience.
There were few basic aspects of computers and computation which intrigued Richard P. Feynman, and made the subject sufficiently interesting that he would spend time teaching it. Feynman himself did the lecture on quantum computation. Charles Bennett has already prepared the way by talking about reversible computation, and Norman Margolus on the billiard ball computer, so Feynman developed quantum computation in ways which made its connection to classical reversible computers obvious. His lecture was chiefly developing the idea that an entirely reversible quantum system, without damping processes, could perform universal computation. The insight that quantum computers were really different came only later, and to others, not to Feynman. Feynman only emphasized that the physical scale and speed of computers were not limited by the classical world, since conceptually they could be built of reversible components at the atomic level.
Richard Feynman's course on computing at Caltech, and the course on neural networks taught at the same time by John Hopfield, had a profound impact on career, indeed on the author life. A feature of Feynman's course that greatly influenced the author was his grading policy – instead of a final, most of the grade was based on individual term projects on topics the people chose and which he approved. In 2006, Frederik Denef and the author showed that, much like the problem of protein folding, the traveling salesman problem, and even the problem of finding the ground state of a Hopfield model, the problem of finding vacuum configurations of string theory that agree with observation is NP hard. Patrick Hayden and John Preskill related quantum computation and the black hole information paradox, and Lenny Susskind and collaborators argued that a black hole saturates a physical bound on computation and thus is the most powerful physically realizable computer.
Basic Books is proud to announce the final two volumes of the complete audio CD collection of the late Richard P. Feynmans lectures, originally delivered to his physics students at the California Institute of Technology and later fashioned by the author into his classic textbook Lectures on Physics. Completing the set of audio lectures, volume 20 includes three lectures never previously released to the public. Ranging from the most basic principles of Newtonian physics through such formidable theories as Einsteins general relativity, superconductivity, and quantum mechanics, Feynmans lectures on physics stand as amonument of clear exposition and deep insight.
Basic Books is proud to announce the final two volumes of the complete audio CD collection of the late Richard P. Feynmans lectures, originally delivered to his physics students at the California Institute of Technology and later fashioned by the author into his classic textbook Lectures on Physics. Completing the set of audio lectures, volume 20 includes three lectures never previously released to the public. Ranging from the most basic principles of Newtonian physics through such formidable theories as Einsteins general relativity, superconductivity, and quantum mechanics, Feynmans lectures on physics stand as amonument of clear exposition and deep insight.