Richard P. Feynman was raised in Far Rockaway, New York, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1942. He played an important role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, and went on to professorships at both Cornell University and the California Institute of Technology, where his unconventional lecture style secured his reputation as one of the greatest teachers of his era. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the development of the theory of quantum electrodynamics. Besides his work as a physicist, Feynman was at various times an artist, raconteur, bongo player, and safecracker, as well as the author of many books, including the bestselling Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, and Six Easy Pieces, named one of the best 100 nonfiction books of the twentieth century by The Modern Library. He died in 1988.