How Richard Feynman Famously Rejected a Lucrative Job Offer

Richard P Feynman (1918–1988) was one of the most celebrated minds of the 20th Century, a theoretical physicist and professor known for his work in quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, and particle physics, winning him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. He also worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos.

But more than that, he was an incredibly curious cat. Among other things, he played drums at street parties in Brazil, he learned how to draw and subsequently tried selling his artwork to the brothels of Pasadena, and frequented many a nightclub where he worked on the art of picking up women.

He reminisced about his many life experiences in his book, Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman.

Caltech or Cornell?

One such memory pertained to choosing where to research and teach — Caltech or Cornell.

After much deliberation, he took a philosophical stance and chose Caltech.

“I decided then never to decide again. Nothing — absolutely nothing — would ever change my mind again”, he wrote.

“When you’re young you have all these things to worry about — should you go there, what about your mother. And you worry, and try to decide, but then something else comes up.

It’s much easier to just plain decide. When I was a student at MIT, I got sick and tired of having to decide what kind of dessert I was going to have at the restaurant, so I decided it would always be chocolate ice cream, and never worried about it again.

I decided I would always be Caltech.”

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

But the story doesn’t end there.

After rejecting Cornell, they kept pursuing him.

One of the Cornell faculty members he later met with told him that “it’s funny you didn’t accept our offer at Cornwell. We were all so disappointed and couldn’t understand how you’d turn down such a terrific offer”.

But Feynman didn’t know what the offer was because he never let them tell him. He didn’t want it to distort his ‘I would always be Caltech’ philosophy and leave him with cognitive…