{"id":246351,"date":"2026-11-02T06:17:41","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/feynmans-messenger-lectures"},"modified":"2026-11-02T06:17:41","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:17:41","slug":"feynmans-messenger-lectures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/feynmans-messenger-lectures","title":{"rendered":"Feynman\u2019s Messenger Lectures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><iframe title=\"Feynman\u2019s Messenger Lectures\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HotLmqYFKKg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates paid for the rights to seven #physics lectures recorded in 1964 so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could watch them for free. More than half a century later, they remain remarkably underappreciated.<\/p>\n<p>The lecturer was Richard Feynman.<\/p>\n<p>In November 1964, #richardfeynman delivered Cornell University\u2019s Messenger Lectures, originally planned as a six-part series for a general audience. He eventually added a seventh lecture. The series was titled * <i>The Character of Physical Law<\/i>*, and the BBC filmed it.<\/p>\n<p>A year later, Feynman would receive the #NobelPrize in Physics.<\/p>\n<p>For years, the films circulated among universities before gradually disappearing from public circulation in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates had watched the lectures while studying at Harvard. He later said he had fallen in love with them, even suggesting that if he had encountered Feynman\u2019s teaching earlier, he might have pursued physics instead of building a software company.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/feynmans-messenger-lectures\">Continue reading \u201cFeynman\u2019s Messenger Lectures\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Gates paid for the rights to seven #physics lectures recorded in 1964 so that anyone, anywhere in the world, could watch them for free. More than half a century later, they remain remarkably underappreciated. The lecturer was Richard Feynman. In November 1964, #richardfeynman delivered Cornell University\u2019s Messenger Lectures, originally planned as a six-part series [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,32,30,385,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-education","category-ethics","category-evolution","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}