From 1966 to 1971, Feynman delivered a series of lectures at Hughes Aircraft Company at their Research labs in Malibu. Hughes Aircraft was a military contractor, for whom Feynman consulted, including advising on a neural-net project that was sponsored by the Department of Defense (Genius p. 406). The lectures focused primarily on physics, including astrophysics, astronomy, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and engineering, but in the lectures given from October 1969-May 1970, Feynman decided to turn his focus to organic chemistry and biology. This was a topic that was outside Feynman's usual area of expertise, and the notes show that he worked out several topics and diagrams multiple times before lecturing on them.

The present manuscripts correspond roughly with the first 25 pages or so of John T. Neer's excellent transcription of the notes he took while attending the Feynman-Hughes lectures, with Feynman covering topics such as alkanes, aminos, geometric isomersion, sugars, carbohydrates, aerobic processes, disacharides, the Citric Acid cycle, the respiration chain and much more, with a large portion of the notes devoted to diagrams, chemical structures, and the like. It is interesting to note that while Neer dates the lectures on Biology to October 1969-May 1970, Feynman has titled and dated one of the pages "Lecture Hughes 11/2?/68."