skip to main content
Skip header Section
Feynman Lectures on ComputationJuly 2000
Publisher:
  • Perseus Books
  • 11 Cambridge Center Cambridge, MA
  • United States
ISBN:978-0-7382-0296-9
Published:01 July 2000
Pages:
320
Skip Bibliometrics Section
Bibliometrics
Skip Abstract Section
Abstract

From the Publisher:

From 1983 to 1986, the legendary physicist and teacher Richard Feynman gave a course at Caltech called "Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines." Although the lectures are over ten years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a "Feynmanesque" overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science. These include compatibility, Turing machines (or as Feynman said, "Mr. Turing's machines"), information theory, Shannon's Theorem, reversible computation, the thermodynamics of computation, the quantum limits to computation, and the physics of VLSI devices. Taken together, these lectures represent a unique exploration of the fundamental limitations of digital computers. Feynman's philosophy of learning and discovery comes through strongly in these lectures. He constantly points out the benefits of playing around with concepts and working out solutions to problems on your own - before looking at the back of the book for the answers. As Feynman says in the lectures: "If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one! And that's the way to become a computer scientist."

Cited By

  1. ACM
    Muralidhar R, Borovica-Gajic R and Buyya R (2022). Energy Efficient Computing Systems: Architectures, Abstractions and Modeling to Techniques and Standards, ACM Computing Surveys, 54:11s, (1-37), Online publication date: 31-Jan-2022.
  2. Melbourne J, Talukdar S and Salapaka M Realizing Information Erasure in Finite Time 2018 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), (4135-4140)
  3. ACM
    Zenil H and Marshall J (2013). Ubiquity symposium: Evolutionary computation and the processes of life, Ubiquity, 2013:April, (1-16), Online publication date: 1-Apr-2013.
  4. ACM
    Choi B and Van Meter R (2012). A Θ( √ n)-depth quantum adder on the 2D NTC quantum computer architecture, ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems, 8:3, (1-22), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012.
  5. Karafyllidis I (2012). Quantum Gate Circuit Model of Signal Integration in Bacterial Quorum Sensing, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB), 9:2, (571-579), Online publication date: 1-Mar-2012.
  6. Wallace R and Wallace D Cultural epigenetics Transactions on computational systems biology XIII, (131-170)
  7. Ortega P and Braun D Information, utility and bounded rationality Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Artificial general intelligence, (269-274)
  8. ACM
    Ranganathan P (2010). Recipe for efficiency, Communications of the ACM, 53:4, (60-67), Online publication date: 1-Apr-2010.
  9. ACM
    Crandall J, Ensafi R, Forrest S, Ladau J and Shebaro B The ecology of Malware Proceedings of the 2008 New Security Paradigms Workshop, (99-106)
  10. Gorecki J, Gorecka J and Igarashi Y (2009). Information processing with structured excitable medium, Natural Computing: an international journal, 8:3, (473-492), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2009.
  11. Gradl T, Spörl A, Huckle T, Glaser S and Schulte-Herbrüggen T Parallelising matrix operations on clusters for an optimal control-based quantum compiler Proceedings of the 12th international conference on Parallel Processing, (751-762)
  12. ACM
    Frank M Introduction to reversible computing Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Computing frontiers, (385-390)
Contributors
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Recommendations