Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun

This book describes in a beautiful and comprehensible way Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion, and how Newton (and later Feynman) demonstrated the proof geometrically. The authors expand the proofs even beyond Feynman’s presentation (who expanded on Newton’s approach) to fill in a few gaps. The result is that, essentially through an extended, step-by-step application of Euclidean principles, one can truly understand Newton’s universal law of gravitation as it applies to planetary motion. It is a fascinating and rewarding experience.You will gain an insight into the approach Newton adopted in his Principia (wherein he used geometrical analyses because his calculus was novel, and he thought that novelty may cause readers to doubt his proofs), and similarly you will gain an insight into Feynman’s thought process (who could not follow Newton’s proof at certain points, so developed his own approach to extend Newton’s analysis).As a bonus, the book includes some fascinating personal background about Feynman. Incidentally, you can find a remarkable and enjoyable summary of this argument on 3Blue1Brown’s YouTube channel (Feynman’s Lost Lecture); the visual summary and this book complement each other beautifully. Finally, you can hear Feynman’s lecture on YouTube as well. What a great and inspirational man he was!

You need to be a little bit of a math and astronomy geek to enjoy this. It you know who Richard Feynman is and know a little about his work at CalTech Pasadena, you'll love this. In addition to some rather satisfying math and astronomy, you'll get some insight into his personality and sense of humor.The first two chapters relate some insights into his personality through anecdotes told by fellow professors and colleagues. Then comes the "lost" lecture in which he proves Kepler's theory of an elliptical orbit for Mars using simple high school level geometry - no mean task in itself. This is not some old dry and boring story about a math teacher. Feynman was not only brilliant, he was a prankster!(Look for a copy that still has the Audio CD)Tuva or Bust! Find out what it means.

After years of detective work, Feynman's friends reconstruct his lecture on the motion of planets around the sun. Forgoing calculus, Feynman makes a geometrical argument starting with Newton's geometric proof. But he quickly diverges away from Newton to complete his original proof in his own enlightening manner. An impressive proof clearly written.

It was a fun read, It's really neat to think of how to prove celestial mechanics using only geometry. Nowadays that seems like a handicap, but it was interesting to see just how Newton could have explained his research to those who knew no calculus.

The book is based on notes for a lecture Feynman gave, more or less as a fun exercise, to explain and prove planetary motion. It's a fascinating read. His was an amazing mind.

Great delivery timing and perfect condition of book . Beautiful

Why do planets travel in ellipses around the sun? Study the explanation given in this lecture by Feynman and you will SEE why.

This is an awesome explanation of Newton's proofs that were the foundation of modern math and physics. Every physics student can benefit from this kind of fundamental explanation of the universe. Though the concepts are complex and the author does an imperfect job of translating the lecture to book form the math is no more complex than high school geometry so that untrained laymen can follow it if they apply themselves.