SOURCE: “Mental Arithmetic,” in London Review of Books, January 7, 1993, p. 17.

In the following review of Genius, Wade commends Gleick's portrayal of Richard Feynman's character and life, but concludes that the biography fails to illustrate the reasons why Feynman is considered to be a genius.

Richard Feynman was one of the elite group of American and British physicists who developed atomic weapons with the Manhattan project in the Second World War. He flashed back into the public eye in 1965, when he won a share of the Nobel physics prize, and again two decades later when his formidable presence on the committee inquiring into the crash of the Challenger space shuttle forced the cause of the disaster into the open.

Genius is the attempt by a skilled and elegant science writer, James Gleick, to present the facts of Feynman's life and achievements. Unfortunately, the latter are quite elusive, which is...