Feynman, Richard P. "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman", Inscribed by Feynman to his piano tuner McQuigg

Feynman, Richard P.

"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a Curious Character. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985.

8vo (8¼ × 5½ inches) Publisher's quarter Caltech-orange cloth lettered in gilt, orange boards, plain wove endpapers. In the original pictorial dust-jacket dated "1-85", priced $16.95. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY FEYNMAN IN BLACK INK ON HALF TITLE "FOR MR MCQUIGG/ RICHARD P. FEYNMAN."

The only non-technical book by Richard Feynman published during his lifetime, mainly responsible for his reputation at large. This is arguably THE BEST-KNOWN EXPRESSION OF THE ‘HUMAN SIDE’ OF A GREAT SCIENTIST, and an enduring classic of twentieth-century humanism, not to say joie de vivre and “the pleasure of finding things out”. More than half a million copies of this book have been sold in twenty languages or more.

Howard McQuigg was Feynman’s longtime piano-tuner. They had met in 1961 when Feynman asked McQuigg to tune the piano that he had just bought for his new home on Boulder Road in Altadena. Feynman himself was tone-deaf: He couldn’t distinguish volume from frequency — which might explain his well-known enthusiasm for drumming, by way of compensation —; but pianos haunted him somehow: His first wife Arline had been an accomplished pianist; she had taught his sister to play; they had sold Arline’s piano to pay for her medical care; and now he had bought a new piano for his new bride Gweneth.

And so the two men — the physicist and the piano-tuner — got along famously, it seems, plunging instantly into long talks about real and perceived tones, ‘cents’, and the stiffness of piano-strings. Following up on one of these conversations, Feynman wrote McQuigg a six-page letter on the subject: “I suspect”, he concluded, that “you piano tuners have been mistuning pianos since they were invented”.

Be that as it may, the two men certainly enjoyed a long and cordial relationship for the rest of Feynman’s life, and towards the end — although Feynman tried very hard in general not to sign or inscribe his books — he made an exception for McQuigg.

Signed copies of this book are NOTORIOUSLY RARE; inscribed copies are rarer still; and copies inscribed to interesting, identifiable individuals are rarest of all. Indeed Feynman’s signature has become something of a ‘Feynman story’ of its own: The famous physicist, it seems, who understood so much, could never understand why people collect autographs. He asked one collector, “Could you please write and explain it to me?” To another he wrote, “I’m sorry to have to inform you that I do not send autographs”; and then he signed the letter, thereby sending an autograph. He even made a bet, once, on how many times he would have to sign his name in connection with a certain speaking engagement. He lost. Requests for Feynman’s signature were referred routinely to his secretary, who returned instead a printed card saying firmly that “Professor Feynman has found it necessary to refuse all requests for autographs”. The result of all this is that Feynman’s signature is very rare indeed, and highly prized. In sum, this is AN ELEGANT AND EVOCATIVE ASSOCIATION COPY, neatly uniting Feynman’s ear, his mind, and his heart.

PROVENANCE

HOWARD JAMES MCQUIGG (1916–2002), piano-tuner, of Monrovia near Pasadena, inscribed to him as above. By descent; sold 28 May 2010.

LITERATURE

J. Gleick Genius (1993) 64–65

J. C. Bryner “Stiff-string theory: Richard Feynman on piano tuning”, Physics Today volume 62, no. 12 (December 2009), pages 46–49.