A repost and a new link.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates believes that if he had been able to watch physicist Richard Feynman lecture on physics in 1964 his life might have played out differently.
Mr. Gates, of course, is legendary as a Harvard University dropout who went on to create the world’s most successful software firm. He has told associates that if had watched the lectures earlier in his life he might have become a physicist instead of a software entrepreneur.
However, Mr. Gates, who is also well known for his sharp and varied intellectual interests and his philanthropic commitment to education, said this week that he had purchased the rights to videos of seven lectures that Dr. Feynman gave at Cornell University called “The Character of Physical Law,” in an effort to make them broadly available via the Internet.
Microsoft Research announced on Wednesday that Mr. Gates, who purchased the rights to the videos privately from the Feynman estate, BBC and from Cornell University, in cooperation with Curtis Wong, a Microsoft researcher, has created a Web site that is intended to enhance the videos by annotating them with related digital content.
The name “Tuva” was chosen in reference to Dr. Feynman’s decade long — and ultimately unsuccessful — effort to reach the tiny Russian republic of Tuva, which is located in Asia, toward the end of his life.
Mr. Gates said that he had stumbled upon the film version of the lectures a number of years ago, watched them with a friend using a traditional film projector, and “fell in love” with them....MORE
And at Microsoft:
Project Tuva: Richard Feynman’s Messenger Lecture Series
Project Tuva was a collaborative research project with Bill Gates in 2009 demonstrating the potential of interactive video learning by highlighting the “core scientific concepts” of Richard Feynman’s Messenger Lectures Series. Upon release, the first of the seven lectures: The Law of Gravitation – An Example of Physical Law, was brought to life with interactive visualizations, links to searchable transcripts, integrated note taking capabilities and other features. The Silverlight application was retired in 2016, but the Richard Feynman videos are still available below. Learn more.
- Overview
- Introduction
- 1: Physical Law
- 2: Math and Physics
- 3: Conservation Principles
- 4: Symmetry
- 5: Past and Future
- 6: Probability and Uncertainty
- 7: New Laws
If that doesn't appeal, here's Mr. Gates' retirement video:
