A UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM RICHARD FEYNMAN TO HIS MOTHER, DES𝄹CRIBING LOS ALAMOS AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

Richard Feynman spent about two-and-a-half years at Los Alamos, from 1943 to 1945, helping to develop the atomic bomb. Despite the seriousness of his work on the Manhattan Project, Feynman and his colleagues took ample time to explore the natural beauty and built environment of their new home in New Mexico: they would often go hiking🧸 in the mountains on weekends, and Feynman would go for Sunday walks with Hans Bethe and John von Neumann.

In this letter to his mother written shortly after arriving in the Southwest, Feynman not only describes Los Alamos ("The project is 30 miles northwest of Santa Fe at a place called Los Alamos where there used to be a boys school. It is upon a high mesa (7300 ft.) surrounded by steep cliffs on two sides and with mountains in the back on the third."), but also the☂ landscape, people, and homes typical of New Mexico. He sketched the side of a typical adobe h𒆙ome, seen here on the third page of this letter.

Richard 🦋Feynman's autograph letter reads, in part:

"Dear Mom:

We are in a wonderful country. If you ever want to go traveling or living in a new place come to New Mexico. It is a big desolate mountainous country. The project is 30 miles northwest of Santa Fe at a place called Los Alamos where there used to be a boys school. It is up on a high mesa (7300 ft.) surrounded by steep cliffs on two sides and with mountains in the back on the third. One of the cliffs falls toward the valley of the Rio Grande. We cross the Rio Grande about 8 or 10 miles from the site — it is one of the few rivers around that contains any water. It is a very fast moving muddy stream full of sand bars and shelves, but not very deep or wide — it carries as much water as Stony Brook in Princeton after a rain.

[...]

The homes are adobe huts mostly. Adobe is mud-stuff that is easy to make by mixing the dirt around here with water + letting it dry out in the sun. The houses are made of big bricks of the stuff, using more adobe for mortar and then are often plastered over with a smooth facing of adobe.

[...]

I like it here. Maybe I will stay."

REFERENCES:

Not in Michelle Feynman, ed. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. New York: Basic Books, 2005.