What Do You Care What Other People Think?

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character (1988) is the second of two books consisting of transcribed and edited, oral reminiscences from American physicist Richard Feynman. It follows Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!

The book presents his life as a series of humorous stories. Prepared as he struggled with cancer, it was the last of Feynman's autobiographical works.

Nearly half of the book deals with his involvement on the Rogers Commission investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In one chapter, he describes an impromptu experiment in which he showed how the O-rings in the shuttle's rocket boosters could have failed due to cold temperatures on the morning of the launch. This failure was later determined to be the primary cause of the shuttle's destruction.

The book is much more loosely organized than the earlier Surely You're Joking. It contains short stories, letters, photographs, and a few of the sketches that Feynman created in later life when he had learned to draw from an artist friend, Jirayr Zorthian.

Of note is the story of his first wife, Arline, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died while Feynman was working on the Manhattan Project; the book's title is taken from a question she often put to him when he seemed preoccupied with his colleagues' opinions about his work.

Citation

• Feynman, Richard P., What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 1988, W W Norton, ISBN 0-393-02659-0, 2001 paperback: ISBN 0-393-32092-8

See also

• Amour-propre
• Richard Feynman. Challenger disaster

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