Regarding the Feynman lectures on physics (that eventually became the famous three volumes), David Goodstein and Gerry Neugebauer wrote, “Through the distant veil of memory, many of the students and faculty attending the lectures have said that having two years of physics with Feynman was the experience of a lifetime.
But that’s not how it seemed at the time. Many of the students dreaded the class, and as the course wore on, attendance by the registered students started dropping alarmingly. But at the same time, more and more faculty and graduate students started attending. The room stayed full, and Feynman may never have known he was losing some of his intended audience.
But even in Feynman’s view, his pedagogical endeavor did not succeed.
He wrote in the 1963 preface to the Lectures: ‘I don’t think I did very well by the students.’ Rereading the books, one sometimes seems to catch Feynman looking over his shoulder, not at his young audience, but directly at his colleagues, saying ‘Look at that! Look how I finessed that point! Wasn’t that clever?’ But even when he thought he was explaining things lucidly to freshmen or sophomores, it was not really they who were able to benefit most from what he was doing. It was his peers — scientists, physicists, and professors — who would be the main beneficiaries of his magnificent achievement, which was nothing less than to see physics through the fresh and dynamic perspective of Richard Feynman.”
