Here's Ralph Leighton.

So he says, "People, I mean the average person, the great majority of people, are woefully, pitifully, absolutely ignorant of the science of the world that they live in.

And an interesting question of the relation of science to modern society is just that.

Why is it possible for people to stay so woefully ignorant and yet reasonably happy in modern society?" And then he says, "I believe that science has remained irrelevant because we wait until somebody asks us questions or until we are invited to give a speech on Einstein's theory to people who don't understand Newtonian mechanics.

But we never are invited to give an attack on faith healing or on astrology.

I suggest, maybe incorrectly and perhaps wrongly, that we are too polite." So Feynman was interested in the role of science in society for a number of years, especially after the war, when science was used to create the atomic bomb, and so he gave various lectures.

One of them is called The Value of Science.

So that sort of stuck in his head, and then many, many years later, he was at our dinner table with Ralph Leighton, and they were playing a geography game to sort of entertain and educate themselves or the children or something.

He became Feynman's writing partner, and perhaps most important, his drumming partner.

Drumming was key.

Without drumming, I don't think I would have had more than a passing relationship, maybe when Feynman was over at our house, because my father was a professor of physics at Caltech, as Feynman was, and they did work on some projects together, most notably what are called the big red books, The Feynman Lectures on Physics.

You'll see three names on the cover for authors, Feynman, Leighton, and Sands.

That Leighton was my father.

That would have been about it, but since Feynman heard me and my friend Tom Rudishhauser outside on the patio drumming on little teak tables from Taiwan, he was drawn out to join us, and we specifically left one for him to pick up should he have gone for the bait, [laughs] and he went for the bait, and that led to a wonderful relationship.

Feynman and I would get together for drumming, it seemed like, every week, and then stories would pop out.

So go figure.Ralph Leighton