William Hurt has been cast as physicist Richard Feynman for an upcoming BBC/Science Channel drama about the presidential commission that investigated the Challenger disaster. Ah, science dramas! Our dreams are coming true! (Feynman figured out that cold temperatures affected the resilience of some of the materials used on the space shuttle, and he demonstrated this finding with a rubber ring and a glass of ice water. Boom.) Feynman’s memoirs Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think? are pretty much the best, and while we might prefer a movie about all his silly hijinks — safe cracking, using goofy pencils his wife had personalized for him — we’ll settle for the story of one of the most dramatic moments in American science.
