Taken from “Surely You're Joking, Mr.
Feynman!” Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Phillips Feynman as told to Ralph Leighton edited by
Edward Hutchings
I
don’t know why, but I’m always very careless, when I go on a trip, about the
address or telephone number or anything of the people who invited me. I figure
I’ll be met, or somebody else will know where we’re going; it’ll get
straightened out somehow.
One
time, in 1957, I went to a gravity conference at the University of North
Carolina. I was supposed to be an expert in a different field who looks at
gravity.
I
landed at the airport a day late for the conference (I couldn’t make it the
first day), and I went out to where the taxis were. I said to the dispatcher,
“I’d like to go to the University of North Carolina.”
“Which
do you mean,” he said, “the State University of North Carolina at Raleigh, or
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?”
Needless
to say, I hadn’t the slightest idea. “Where are they?” I asked, figuring that
one must be near the other.
“One’s
north of here, and the other is south of here, about the same distance.”
I
had nothing with me that showed which one it was, and there was nobody else
going to the conference a day late like I was.
That
gave me an idea. “Listen,” I said to the dispatcher. “The main meeting began
yesterday, so there were a whole lot of guys going to the meeting who must have
come through here yesterday. Let me describe them to you: They would have their
heads kind of in the air, and they would be talking to each other, not paying
attention to where they were going, saying things to each other, like ‘G-mu-nu.
G-mu-nu.’”
His
face lit up. “Ah, yes,” he said. “You mean Chapel Hill!” He called the next
taxi waiting in line. “Take this man to the university at Chapel Hill.”
“Thank
you,” I said, and I went to the conference.