The Feynman Lectures on Physics, The Most Popular Physics Book Ever Written, Now Completely Online

feynman textbook1

Image by Tamiko Thiel, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Last fall, we let you know that Cal­tech and The Feyn­man Lec­tures Web­site joined forces to cre­ate an online edi­tion of The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics. They start­ed with Vol­ume 1. And now they’ve fol­lowed up with Vol­ume 2 and Vol­ume 3, mak­ing the col­lec­tion com­plete.

First pre­sent­ed in the ear­ly 1960s at Cal­tech by the Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist Richard Feyn­man, the lec­tures were even­tu­al­ly turned into a book by Feyn­man, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The text went on to become arguably the most pop­u­lar physics book ever writ­ten, sell­ing more than 1.5 mil­lion copies in Eng­lish, and get­ting trans­lat­ed into a dozen lan­guages.

The new online edi­tion makes The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics avail­able in HTML5. The text “has been designed for ease of read­ing on devices of any size or shape,” and you can zoom into text, fig­ures and equa­tions with­out degra­da­tion. Dive right into the lec­tures here. And if you’d pre­fer to see Feyn­man (as opposed to read Feyn­man), we would encour­age you to watch ‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law,’ Feynman’s  sev­en-part lec­ture series record­ed at Cor­nell in 1964.

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics is now list­ed in our col­lec­tions of Free eBooks and Free Text­books.

Pho­to­graph by Tom Har­vey. Copy­right © Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es (part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties)

Free Physics Text­books

‘The Char­ac­ter of Phys­i­cal Law’: Richard Feynman’s Leg­endary Course Pre­sent­ed at Cor­nell, 1964

The Richard Feyn­man Tril­o­gy: The Physi­cist Cap­tured in Three Films


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Comments (13)
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  • Mike Shelton says:

    The more I read and lis­ten to Feyn­man, the more fas­ci­nat­ed I am of the man him­self. We may nev­er see anoth­er one like him in our life­time. I ordered the hard cov­er boxed set from Ama­zon ear­li­er this week, even though they are avail­able for free online. For me, they are worth hav­ing phys­i­cal copies of.

  • gluejar says:

    Note that these are free to access but pro­hib­it­ed to “down­load”. I wrote a blog post about it ear­li­er this year: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-dmca-takedown-of-feynman-lectures.html

  • swatiramesh says:

    These three books are kind of bibles who want to study physics. i almost slept with them in my young days..We will definit­ly not have anoth­er man like this. Mr. Feyn­man, YOU ARE THE MAN..

  • I was a grad stu­dent of Feyn­man and Bill Wag­n­er (Coau­thor of Feyn­man’s only book on grav­i­ty) at the time the Feyn­man Lec­tures were being giv­en. I have spent my career try­ing to write sequels of FL for grad­u­ate cours­es I’ve taught. Dif­fi­cult task, indeed! But, it’s been fun try­ing and I gained appre­cia­tive stu­dents. Ongo­ing results are free online. {http://www.uark.edu/ua/modphys/testing/markup/Harter-SoftWebApps.html} See what you think. Enjoy com­ments good or bad.

  • Post­ed some com­ments rel­a­tive to Feyn­man Lec­tures and my own expe­ri­ence as his grad­u­ate stu­dent in the 60’s. These com­ments have dis­ap­peared.

  • Judy Moken says:

    I real­ly would like to chat online about some physics prob­lems that are both­er­ing me.Will they have the books etc online free?
    Thanks,
    Judy Moken

  • Gabriel Ferraz Rubinger says:

    Feyn­man tam­bém têm muitos fãs aqui no Brasil! Real­mente, era uma mente bril­hante e sin­gu­lar. Ten­ho a coleção dele em por­tuguês; e o próx­i­mo livro de Feyn­man que dese­jo ler é o ‘QED’. ‘The Char­ac­ter’ já foi traduzi­do para o por­tuguês, eu o ten­ho. Quan­to ao QED, não sei se existe em lín­gua por­tugue­sa; de qual­quer for­ma, pos­so lê-lo em inglês.

    TRANSLATION: Feyn­man also have a lot of peo­ple who like him in Brazil! He was real­ly a bril­liant mind. I have his books (the ‘Lec­tures’) in por­tuguese; and the next I want to read is ‘QED’. ‘The Char­ac­ter’ was already trans­lat­ed into por­tuguese lan­guage, I´ve pur­chased it. But I don´t know if QED is avail­able in my lan­guage; any­way, I can read this in eng­lish.

  • jneer says:

    For those inter­est­ed in con­tin­u­ing their learn­ing through Feyn­man you may find my lec­ture notes post­ed free on line at

    http://www.thehugheslectures.info/

    The notes are tran­scribed from raw real time lec­tures last­ing about 2 hours per week for 9 month a year. They cov­er lec­tures from 1966 through 1971

    While doing my under­grad­u­ate work in physics my coun­selor offered me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the FLP books in a spe­cial stud­ies pro­gram. That hooked me on Feyn­man and when hired by Hugh­es in LA in 1966 I found him lec­tur­ing at the Hugh­es Labs to a small group of prac­tic­ing senior sci­en­tist and engi­neers.
    Unfor­tu­nate­ly the lec­tures we not record­ed in any media. These notes a the best rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those lec­tures and are cross ref­er­enced to the FLP where applic­a­ble which was in the 2nd and 3rd year of lec­tures. The first lec­ture on Cos­mol­o­gy and Astro­physics is unique since he nev­er lec­tured on those sub­ject at Cal­Tech. Vol­ume 5 is on math-physics and cov­ers mate­r­i­al he thought he should have start­ed the 3 vol­ume FLP with.

    FYI Since post­ing these notes last year, there have been near­ly 50,000 vis­its and down­loads from around the world and 165 coun­tries. This inter­est and reac­tion to my post­ing is per­son­al­ly grat­i­fy­ing for the work involved in them and a response I know Feyn­man would be very pleased with.
    …and yes, he was genius, a fan­tas­tic teacher, a one of a kind, con­tro­ver­sial, but the one who had the biggest influ­ence on my edu­ca­tion­al devel­op­ment.
    Enjoy
    John

  • jneer says:

    glue­jar
    See my com­ment and the lec­ture note down­loads if you would like to dig deep­er into the FLP sub­ject mat­ters and oth­er top­ics: Cos­mol­o­gy, Astro­physics, and Math-Physics

    find them here

    http://www.thehugheslectures.info/

  • Mike Nenens says:

    I used those texts and was lucky to have a sem­i­nar with Feyn­man. Delight­ed that many more can now enjoy his clar­i­ty and insight b

  • Guido says:

    Descar­ga en español. Por favor

  • Asutosh says:

    Is there a free audio book avail­able in Hindi(an Indi­an lan­guage) ?

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