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Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun
	by David L. Goodstein Richard Feynman Judith Goodstein W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393039188 Hardcover with CD-ROM (April 1996); 224 pp Ships immediately

Synopsis
In 1964 Richard Feynman delivered a lecture to the Caltech freshman class, "The Motion of Planets Around the Sun"--why the planets move elliptically, as Isaac Newton had discovered 300 years earlier. The subject of this lecture was the watershed discovery that separated the ancient world from the modern. In this book/CD package, Feynman's lecture has been reconstructed and explained in meticulous, accessible detail, together with a history of ideas of the planets' motions. 25 photos.

Expert Commentary:
From Gilbert Taylor - BookList: Recorded in 1964, this lecture exhibits two unusual aspects: a superstar faculty member teaching "freshmen" a treat unheard of in today's academy--and a proof using only geometry, not calculus as is usual, that planets orbit in ellipses. The lecturer, of course, is the playful genius Richard Feynman--safecracker, atom bomb maker, bongo drummer, and beloved teacher. In tribute to his qualities, former Feynman student Goodstein and his archivist spouse have restored Feynman's voice on a CD accompanying this book. Goodstein expands, in a version replete with numerous diagrams, his spare notes; in a subsequent section, he transcribes Feynman's words verbatim. The effect is a demonstration of what makes an effective science teacher, and lapsed mathematicians who memorized the formulas for triangles and circles can start following Feynman's argument, which he couched in geometry because those were Kepler's and Newton's tools when they revolutionized physics. As for acquisition criteria, general libraries that circulate the Feynman biography "Genius" (1992) by James Gleick can chance it with this curio.

From Publisher's Weekly: Isaac Newton, in his Principia Mathematica (1687), proved Johannes Kepler's law explaining why planets travel in elliptical orbits around the Sun. In 1964, theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, the bestselling author and Nobel Prize winner, set forth his own proof of Kepler's law, using only plane geometry. Feynman's difficult proof, presented in an introductory lecture to Caltech undergraduates, never made it into the classic multivolume Feynman Lectures on Physics, published between 1963 and 1965, but California Institute of Technology archivist Judith Goodstein unearthed the transcript of Feynman's 1964 lecture, published here along with explanatory commentary and historical background, plus 25 photographs and 150 diagrams. Caltech physics professor David Goodstein, Feynman's friend and colleague until the latter's death in 1988, provides a warm reminiscence and does a good job of explaining how quantum physics and relativity supplanted Newtonian science.

From N. Sadanand - Scientific American: Richard Feynman's prowess as an educator is well documented in this recently unearthed 'lost' installment from his introductory physics lectures. . . .The authors' chapters add helpful scientific background and reminiscences about Feynman. The greatest treat, however, is listening to Feynman's New York-accented voice reciting the lecture on the accompanying compact disc.

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