FEYNMAN, Richard P.

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Autograph letter signed, to his friend Carol Field. A candid letter recounting Feynman's late 1945 tour of plutonium facilities for the Manhattan Project, among his last work on the project. The letter captures Feynman in a period of personal and professional transition, as he reflects on the atomic bombings, contemplates his post-war career, and grapples with tragedy in his marriage.In September 1945, Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was coming to the end of his three-year stay at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He joined the Manhattan Project immediately after completing his doctorate, and jointly devised the formula for predicting nuclear energy yields. This letter describes, in couched language, a safety inspection tour of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington - the two vast factory cities producing plutonium for the atomic bomb. Feynman's work as a safety inspector is among the lesser-known of his contributions to the project. During a previous trip to Oak Ridge, he comprehensively reworked the plant's arrangements for storing uranium, leading many of the workers to credit him with preventing a catastrophic accident. Much of the letter is devoted to his observations of the American landscape, and particularly the Rocky Mountains, from the air - as he put it, "I sure like to fly".The typically jaunty tone disguises a period of intense personal tragedy for Feynman. In June 1945, his wife and childhood sweetheart Arline died from a long-standing tuberculosis infection

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