Reading List

Authors Like Richard Feynman

Q: What should I read after Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!?

Its sequel, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), includes his account of the Challenger inquiry. Beyond Feynman, try George Gamow's Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (1940) or Primo Levi's The Periodic Table (1975).

Q: Does Richard Feynman have a new book?

Feynman died in 1988, so new books are collections. The Quotable Feynman, edited by his daughter Michelle Feynman, came out in paperback from Princeton University Press in April 2025.

Q: Which Richard Feynman book should I read first?

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) is the easiest way in. For the physics itself, QED (1985) and The Character of Physical Law (1965) are lectures for general audiences.

Richard Feynman was born in Queens, New York, in 1918. At Los Alamos he worked on the atomic bomb and amused himself by opening his colleagues' combination locks; one filing cabinet gave way to 27–18–28, the opening digits of the number e. In June 1945 his first wife, Arline Greenbaum, died of tuberculosis. Twenty years later he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics. In 1986, on the commission investigating the Challenger disaster, he clamped a piece of O-ring material, dropped it into a glass of ice water and showed at a televised hearing that it lost its spring in the cold. His bestsellers Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) and What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988) were compiled with Ralph Leighton from recorded stories. The ten writers below share his habits: hard science in plain speech, told through stories and tested against the world.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Popular science · Physics memoir · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

The closest matches to Richard Feynman are Carl Sagan, the astronomer behind the 1980 television series Cosmos, Freeman Dyson, his colleague at Cornell who in 1949 showed that Feynman's diagrams matched the methods of Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, and James Gleick, whose biography Genius (1992) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Further down are a chemist who told his life through the elements, and a historian of science who argues that science does not move the way Feynman's stories suggest.

10 authors like Richard Feynman

The candle lecture

Michael Faraday

English · The Chemical History of a Candle (1861)

Faraday was born in Newington Butts, Surrey, in 1791 and had only basic schooling; at 14 he was apprenticed to a bookbinder and read widely during his seven years there. He gave nineteen Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution between 1827 and 1860, and his lectures on a candle, first given in 1848, were published in 1861. He died in 1867.

Faraday and Feynman both explain science by starting from an ordinary object and following it all the way down. Faraday suits readers who want the same method in a nineteenth-century voice.

— Lisanne

Physics as a comic dream

George Gamow

Russian-born American · Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (1940), One Two Three... Infinity (1947)

Gamow was born in Odessa in 1904. After two failed attempts to leave the Soviet Union by kayak in 1932, he stayed abroad after a 1933 conference in Brussels and settled in the United States in 1934. He was an early developer of the Big Bang theory, and in his Mr Tompkins books an ordinary man dreams his way into worlds where relativity and quantum effects can be seen. UNESCO gave him the Kalinga Prize for popularising science in 1956.

Like Feynman, Gamow was a working physicist and a known prankster: he added Hans Bethe's name to a 1948 paper so that the authors would read Alpher, Bethe, Gamow. Read him for the same playfulness applied to relativity.

— Lisanne

Wonder on a cosmic scale

Carl Sagan

American · The Dragons of Eden (1977), Cosmos (1980), Pale Blue Dot (1994)

Sagan was born in Brooklyn in 1934 and became an astronomer. The Dragons of Eden won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1978, and he co-wrote and narrated the 1980 television series Cosmos. In The Demon-Haunted World he set out a ‘baloney detection kit’ for testing claims. He died in 1996.

Sagan and Feynman both argued that scientific honesty is a habit anyone can learn, and both wrote for readers with no training. Sagan suits readers who want the big picture more than the anecdote.

— Lisanne

Every book by Carl Sagan →

The colleague

Freeman Dyson

British-born American · Disturbing the Universe (1979), Infinite in All Directions (1988)

Dyson was born in Crowthorne, Berkshire, in 1923 and met Feynman at Cornell in 1947–48. In 1949 he showed that Feynman's diagrams were equivalent to the methods of Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, which helped persuade J. Robert Oppenheimer that Feynman was right. Later in life he disagreed with the scientific consensus on climate change. He died in 2020.

Dyson knew Feynman's work from the inside and wrote the foreword to The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (1999), a collection of Feynman's talks and interviews. Read him for physics as a life among people, in a more reflective voice.

— Lisanne

A life told in elements

Primo Levi

Italian · If This Is a Man (1947), The Periodic Table (1975)

Levi was born in Turin in 1919, took a chemistry degree in 1941 and survived about eleven months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated in January 1945. He then worked for decades at the paint company SIVA, becoming its technical director. The Periodic Table is a set of mostly autobiographical stories, each named after an element; in 2006 the Royal Institution called it the best science book ever written.

Levi, like Feynman, tells a scientist's life through small practical problems solved by hand. He suits readers who want the same curiosity with far more weight behind it.

— Lisanne

The biographer

James Gleick

American · Chaos (1987), Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992), The Information (2011)

Gleick was born in New York City in 1954 and worked as a journalist. Chaos and Genius were each finalists for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, and The Information won the Royal Society Winton Prize. He has also written a life of Isaac Newton (2003).

Genius sets Feynman's anecdotes inside the full life and explains the physics behind them. Gleick suits readers who want more than the stories Feynman chose to tell about himself.

— Lisanne

The argument against the tidy story

Thomas Kuhn

American · The Copernican Revolution (1957), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)

Kuhn was born in Cincinnati in 1922 and took a doctorate in physics at Harvard in 1949 before turning to the history of science. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions argues that science alternates between long stretches of ‘normal science’ inside a shared paradigm and sudden revolutions, and it made ‘paradigm shift’ an everyday phrase. Critics have argued that his account makes the choice between theories irrational. He died in 1996.

Feynman tells science as one honest mind testing nature; Kuhn argues that scientists work inside shared frameworks they rarely question. Read him after Feynman to see the same enterprise from the outside.

— Lisanne

Physics in short chapters

Carlo Rovelli

Italian · Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014), The Order of Time (2017), Helgoland (2020)

Rovelli was born in Verona in 1956 and is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics has sold more than two million copies in 41 languages. His criticism of military spending has made him a political figure in Italy: in 2024 his invitation to represent Italy at the Frankfurt Book Fair was withdrawn, then renewed after protests.

Rovelli, like Feynman, explains quantum theory without equations and is happy to say what physicists do not yet know. He suits readers who want the ideas in an evening rather than the stories.

— Lisanne

Every book by Carlo Rovelli →

Physics in the kitchen

Helen Czerski

British · Storm in a Teacup (2016), Blue Machine (2023)

Czerski is a physicist and oceanographer and a professor at University College London. Storm in a Teacup is subtitled ‘The Physics of Everyday Life’, and Blue Machine, about how the ocean shapes the world, won the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation in 2024. The Institute of Physics awarded her its Kelvin Medal in 2018.

Czerski shares Feynman's habit of finding physics in ordinary things, like his O-ring in a glass of ice water. She suits readers who want that curiosity from a working scientist writing now.

— Lisanne

Curiosity played for laughs

Mary Roach

American · Stiff (2003), Packing for Mars (2010), Replaceable You (2025)

Roach was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1959. Her books follow science into odd corners: human cadavers in Stiff, sex research in Bonk (2008), life in space in Packing for Mars. Her most recent, Replaceable You (2025), is subtitled ‘Adventures in Human Anatomy’.

Roach, like Feynman, asks the question everyone else is too polite to ask and turns the answer into a story. She is a journalist rather than a scientist, which makes her the lighter read.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mary Roach →

Where to start if you loved Richard Feynman

If you liked Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, read George Gamow.

Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (1940): relativity and quantum physics as a comic dream.

If you liked What Do You Care What Other People Think?, read Helen Czerski.

Storm in a Teacup (2016): physics found in everyday objects.

If you want the man behind the stories, read James Gleick.

Genius (1992): the life and the physics together.

If you want science told through a life, read Primo Levi.

The Periodic Table (1975): a chemist's memoir in elements.

If you have read only the memoirs, try Feynman's QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985).

His lectures for a general audience on the theory that won him the Nobel Prize.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Richard Feynman

Who writes like Richard Feynman?

Carl Sagan, George Gamow and Carlo Rovelli write about physics for general readers in the same plain voice. Mary Roach shares his comic curiosity, and James Gleick wrote his biography, Genius (1992).

What should I read after Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!?

Its sequel, What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), includes his account of the Challenger inquiry. Beyond Feynman, try George Gamow's Mr Tompkins in Wonderland (1940) or Primo Levi's The Periodic Table (1975).

Does Richard Feynman have a new book?

Feynman died in 1988, so new books are collections. The Quotable Feynman, edited by his daughter Michelle Feynman, came out in paperback from Princeton University Press in April 2025.

Which Richard Feynman book should I read first?

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) is the easiest way in. For the physics itself, QED (1985) and The Character of Physical Law (1965) are lectures for general audiences.

Is Richard Feynman like Carl Sagan?

Both wrote about science for readers with no training, and both argued for scepticism. Feynman tells stories about himself; Sagan writes about the universe and our place in it.

Why is Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! criticised?

Some chapters, notably ‘You Just Ask Them?’, describe women in demeaning terms. Students at Caltech protested in 1968 and 1972 against stories he told about ‘lady drivers’.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Richard Feynman

10 authors like Richard Feynman

Michael Faraday

George Gamow

Carl Sagan

Freeman Dyson

Primo Levi

James Gleick

Thomas Kuhn

Carlo Rovelli

Helen Czerski

Mary Roach

Where to start if you loved Richard Feynman

Frequently asked questions about authors like Richard Feynman

Who writes like Richard Feynman?

What should I read after Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!?

Does Richard Feynman have a new book?

Which Richard Feynman book should I read first?

Is Richard Feynman like Carl Sagan?

Why is Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! criticised?

Lisanne Swart

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