Microsoft Makes Feynman Lectures Available Online

Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has launched a website that makes an acclaimed lecture series by iconic Caltech physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the public for the first time. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates.

Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called The Character of Physical Law, to make them available to the public for free, “with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science.”

Feynman (1918–88), one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists and original thinkers of the 20th century, was beloved by the Caltech community as a friend and teacher. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, and in 1986 he became known to an even larger audience through his participation—and his famous ice-water experiment—on the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

“No one was more adept at making science fun and interesting than Richard Feynman,” said Gates. “More than 20 years after first seeing them, these are still some of the best science lectures I’ve heard.” Click here to access the historic lectures and related content.