> When Feynman died, Murray wrote a rather snarky obituary, saying of Feynman: “He surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, and he spent a great deal of time and energy generating anecdotes about himself”. I never quite understood why Murray—who could have gone to any university in the world—chose to work at Caltech for 33 years in an office two doors down from Feynman.
This is great. Although being interesting and challenging > being likeable, especially for a person like Murray seems to be. Especially professional environments.
I'm curious why Feynman decided to work at Caltech for such a long time as well, given he also could have been anywhere.
Some of these anecdotes about Murray are as good as Feynman's.
Caltech is often ranked as one of the world’s top-ten universities, according to Wikipedia. It’s really strong in research and the pure sciences, which might have been what drew Feynman and Gell-Mann. (Note also that Caltech has the highest per-capita number of associated Nobel laureates in the world.)
(Disclaimer: I’m a current Caltech undergrad and am thus biased :-)).
The causality goes the other way at that level, though. Caltech's physics program was widely ranked as world class largely because of Feynman and Gell-Mann. They could have done world class work anywhere, and brought along a train of talent with them. But they both liked Pasadena, apparently.
Somewhere in there he says that he eventually had offers from CalTech & Columbia and he chose CalTech for several reasons, one of which was that he perceived it to be "cleaner." My impression was that he viewed NYC as physically dirty. He also says this about MIT (where he went to grad school). He wanted to go to Princeton, but was rejected. He ended up having to 'settle' for MIT, but again he says his preconceived notion of MIT was that it was a 'grubby' school.
Gell-Mann sounds like a very smart but also eccentric friend of mine, who I'm almost certain is on the spectrum. He has a similar view towards cleanliness and exhibits many of the same traits, such as Murray's interaction with the limo driver. Gell-Man seems to fit this profile.
Although I hate when people try to armchair psychoanalyze public figures they've never met so I'll stop there.
About gas stations, we only have the fact, and must speculate. Hotelling's law may be a good guess, but there need not be only one such influence. Once a corner has a gas station and occupies the space of "the place to get gas" in the minds of resident drivers, it becomes the obvious place to build the next, preferable to trying (and maybe failing) to persuade them to go somewhere else instead.
In the case of Caltech, having two adjacent Nobelers makes it easier for each to attract the best grad students than if he were alone, even after he loses half to his rival. We might make an analogy to chemical electropositivity instead of commerce.
This is great. Although being interesting and challenging > being likeable, especially for a person like Murray seems to be. Especially professional environments.
I'm curious why Feynman decided to work at Caltech for such a long time as well, given he also could have been anywhere.
Some of these anecdotes about Murray are as good as Feynman's.