I think your view of what Feynman was like, and what he was good at, may be being distorted by the fact that books like “Surely you’re joking...” are written for a general audience and therefore inevitably focus on things other than the physics and mathematics.
A few more concrete remarks:
The “always consider concrete examples” technique seems to me very much the sort of thing that is valuable in doing physics (or mathematics) just as much as in engineering or business.
I bet most of Feynman’s time at the Manhattan project was spent doing physics (or in some cases engineering, or even something like programming—one of his contributions was getting the numerical calculations, done by a big team of people operating mechanical calculators, organized much more efficiently) but what you read about is the lockpicking because it’s (1) funnier, (2) easier for mere mortals to appreciate, and (3) not classified to hell and back.
When he was at Thinking Machines, sure, he bought pens, but he also came up with a novel physics-inspired way of thinking about the dataflow in the machines in terms of differential equations that led them to make some design changes that made them more effective.
I am not at all convinced that relative to other top theoretical physicists Feynman had a “dispreference for difficult mathematics”. He was good at difficult mathematics. Don’t be fooled by the folksy kinda-self-deprecating style of his writing.
I think your view of what Feynman was like, and what he was good at, may be being distorted by the fact that books like “Surely you’re joking...” are written for a general audience and therefore inevitably focus on things other than the physics and mathematics.
A few more concrete remarks:
The “always consider concrete examples” technique seems to me very much the sort of thing that is valuable in doing physics (or mathematics) just as much as in engineering or business.
I bet most of Feynman’s time at the Manhattan project was spent doing physics (or in some cases engineering, or even something like programming—one of his contributions was getting the numerical calculations, done by a big team of people operating mechanical calculators, organized much more efficiently) but what you read about is the lockpicking because it’s (1) funnier, (2) easier for mere mortals to appreciate, and (3) not classified to hell and back.
When he was at Thinking Machines, sure, he bought pens, but he also came up with a novel physics-inspired way of thinking about the dataflow in the machines in terms of differential equations that led them to make some design changes that made them more effective.
I am not at all convinced that relative to other top theoretical physicists Feynman had a “dispreference for difficult mathematics”. He was good at difficult mathematics. Don’t be fooled by the folksy kinda-self-deprecating style of his writing.