ABSTRACT
As the decade of the 1950s draws to a close, over eight hundred scientists descend on the three-day Winter Meeting in the West of the American Physical Society at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena.1 Besides the 157 papers scheduled for presentation, researchers cluster in innumerable, intense discussions in the hallways of the meeting venues-Culbertson Hall, Bridge Laboratory, the Arms Laboratory, and Kerckhoff Laboratory-all on campus. The hotel situation is a mess due to the start of the Santa Anita Race Track season and the Rose Bowl Game. But now, on Tuesday evening, December 29, 1959, it’s time for the much-anticipated banquet (and after-dinner speech) of the Society at the Huntington-Sheraton Hotel in Pasadena. The Bulletin of the American Physical Society had warned conference participants to get their tickets early: “We must remind members who plan to go to the banquet that they should purchase their tickets [$4.50 per person] as soon as possible, because recent dinners have been over-subscribed, and some members have been unable to attend who wanted to do so. This will be a problem all the more so, since our principal speaker will be Professor R. P. Feynman, of the California Institute of Technology, and the title of his talk will be ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.’ ” 2 Indeed, the banquet room is packed. The dinner is over. Pungent pipe smoke mingles with that of cigarettes. An agreeable murmur floats over the scene like a benediction.3 The ebullient, theatrical Richard Feynman, tall, slim, and dark haired, strides to the podium to elevate and entertain. The crowd is poised to be mesmerized. Showtime.
