Dartblog

Nobelist Richard Feynman is one of the engaging figures of the 20th century: groundbreaking physicist, Challenger investigator, carnival drummer, safecracker, and madcap iconoclast — he exuded a joie de vivre that infected everyone around him. We’ve already commented on him in this space (here and here); the slim book at right describes Feynman and friends at play in the 1980’s as they research and try to gain access to the Soviet satellite country of Tuva. They learn the rudiments of the Tuvan language, contact the few experts on the hidden country (a sliver between the USSR and Mongolia), and try to navigate the Soviet bureaucracy.

Written in 1991, the book is a kind of time capsule on pre-Internet communications. In order to get a look at Tuva’s capital city, Kyzyl — the bizarre spelling of which first incited the team’s interest — Feynman’s buddy Ralph Leighton must buy a Landsat satellite photo from the U.S. government for $100. There was no Google Maps at the time. And correspondence with Tuvan and Russian experts took months when done by mail; the group then began using telex, which cut turnaround time down substantially. Books were ordered from Europe and the USSR, with deliveries months later. Our intrepid adventurers took years to do what today we could do in a few days.

Feynman died of cancer before he could go to Tuva, but his friends, who loved him dearly, were later able to install a memorial plaque to him on the left bank of the Yenisei River next to Kyzyl’s monument to the “Centre of Asia” (which is not in the center of Asia).