Born on May 11, 1918, in New York City, Richard Feynman was a physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965 for his contributions to quantum physics. His father was a Jewish immigrant from Belarus who came to the United States in 1895, and his mother’s parents immigrated from Poland.

Feynman attended high school in the Far Rockaway district of Queens. He gained notoriety for teaching himself trigonometry and calculus by the age of 15 and winning the New York University Math Championship during his senior year. Though Feynman applied to Columbia University, his application was rejected because of a quota Columbia (and many other schools) had for Jewish students. He went on to pursue his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University, respectively.

After graduate school, Feynman worked on the Manhattan Project, America’s mission to develop nuclear weapons. And after World War II, he taught physics at Cornell University and the California Institute of Technology. He developed a reputation as a demanding and inspirational teacher as well as a cutting-edge researcher.

Feynman married three times. He wed his high school sweetheart Arlene Greenbaum in 1942; for their entire marriage, Arlene was gravely ill with tuberculosis, to which she succumbed in 1945.