title: Joan Jett

text: Jett and Laguna entered the Who's Ramport Studios with the latter at the helm, and Jett's self-titled solo debut was released by Ariola Records in Europe on May 17, 1980. In the US, after the album was rejected by 23 major labels, Jett and Laguna released it independently on their new Blackheart Records label, which they started with Laguna's daughter's college savings. Laguna remembers, "We couldn't think of anything else to do but print up records ourselves."


title: Joan Jett

text: With Laguna's assistance, Jett formed the Blackhearts. Laguna recounted, "I told Joanie to forget the band and support herself on the advance money. There was enough for her but not for a band. She said she had to have a band. And I believe to this day that it was the Blackhearts, that concept, that made Joan Jett." She placed an ad in the "LA Weekly" stating that she was "looking for three good men". John Doe of X sat in on bass for the auditions held at S.I.R. studios in Los Angeles. He mentioned a local bass player, Gary Ryan, who had recently been crashing on his couch. Ryan was born Gary Moss, and adopted his stage name upon joining the Blackhearts in 1979, in part to cover for the fact that he was only 15 at the time. Ryan was part of the Los Angeles punk scene and had played bass with local artists Top Jimmy and Rik L. Rik. He had been a fan of the Runaways and Jett for years. Jett recognized him at the audition and he was in. Ryan in turn recommended guitarist Eric Ambel, who was also at the time part of Rik L. Rik. The final addition to the original Blackhearts was drummer Danny "Furious" O'Brien, formerly of the San Francisco band the Avengers. This lineup played several gigs at the Golden Bear, in Huntington Beach, California, and the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood before embarking on their first European tour, which consisted of an extensive tour of the Netherlands and a few key shows in England, including the Marquee in London.


title: Joan Jett

text: Laguna fired O'Brien at the end of the tour, and upon returning to the States, Jett, Ryan, and Ambel moved to Long Beach, New York. Auditions were set up, and Lee Crystal, formerly of the Boyfriends and Sylvain Sylvain, became the new drummer. The band then toured throughout the US, slowly building a fan base, but struggling to remain financially afloat. Throughout 1980, the band was able to keep touring solely due to Laguna drawing on advances from outside projects. Jett and Laguna used their personal savings to press copies of the "Joan Jett" album and set up their own system of distribution, sometimes selling the albums out of the trunk of Laguna's Cadillac at the end of each concert. Laguna was unable to keep up with demand for the album. Eventually, old friend and founder of Casablanca Records, Neil Bogart, made a joint venture with Laguna and signed Jett to his new label, Boardwalk Records and re-released the "Joan Jett" album as "Bad Reputation".


title: Joan Jett

text: A spring 1981 concert at the Palladium in New York City proved to be a turning point. Described by music journalists as a career-defining performance by Jett, it helped solidify a strong New York following for Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. After a year of touring and recording, the Blackhearts recorded a new album entitled "I Love Rock 'n Roll" for the label. Ambel was replaced by local guitarist Ricky Byrd during the recording. Byrd recalled in an interview with Guitarhoo!, "One day I went to a studio to jam around a bit with Jett and everything clicked". The first single from the album was the title track, "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", which in the first half of 1982 was number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 for seven weeks in a row. It is "Billboard" No. 56 song of all time and has also been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett released "Album" (1983) and "Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth" (1984). A string of Top 40 hits followed, as well as sellout tours with the Police, Queen, and Aerosmith, among others. She was among the first English-speaking rock acts to appear in Panama and the Dominican Republic.


title: Joan Jett

text: After receiving her own MTV New Year's Eve special, Jett beat out a number of contenders to appear in the movie "Light of Day" with Michael J. Fox. Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Light of Day" especially for the movie, and her performance was critically acclaimed. It was about this time that Ryan and Crystal left the Blackhearts. They were soon replaced by Thommy Price and Kasim Sulton. Later that year, Jett released "Good Music", which featured appearances by the Beach Boys, the Sugarhill Gang, and singer Darlene Love.


title: Joan Jett

text: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts became the first rock band to perform a series of shows at the Lunt–Fontanne Theatre on Broadway, breaking the record at the time for the fastest ticket sell-out. Her next release, "Up Your Alley", went multi-platinum. This album contains the single "I Hate Myself for Loving You", which peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and had been used as the theme song for Sunday Night Football NFL games in America (with altered lyrics, by two singers) during the 2006 and 2007 seasons. This was followed by "The Hit List", which was an album consisting of cover songs. During this time, Jett co-wrote the song "House of Fire", which appeared on Alice Cooper's 1989 album "Trash".


title: Joan Jett

text: In 1990, the band had a song on the "Days of Thunder" soundtrack, "Long Live the Night", written by Jett with Randy Cantor and Michael Caruso.


title: Joan Jett

text: Her 1991 release, "Notorious", which featured the Replacements' Paul Westerberg and former Billy Idol bass player Phil Feit, was the last with Sony/CBS, as Jett switched to Warner Bros. A CD single of "Let's Do It" featuring Jett and Westerberg was also released during this time, and appeared in the song credits for the movie "Tank Girl". In 1993, Jett and Laguna released "Flashback", a compilation of various songs on their own Blackheart Records.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett produced several bands prior to releasing her debut, and her label Blackheart Records released recordings from varied artists such as thrash metal band Metal Church and rapper Big Daddy Kane.


title: Joan Jett

text: The press touted Jett as the "Godmother of Punk" and the "Original Riot Grrrl". In 1994, the Blackhearts released the well-received "Pure and Simple", which featured tracks written with Babes in Toyland's Kat Bjelland, L7's Donita Sparks and Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna. Jett has also been described as the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett returned to producing for the band Circus Lupus in 1992 and again, in 1994, for Bikini Kill. This recording was the "New Radio +2" vinyl 7-inch EP for which she also played and sang back-up vocals. The Riot Grrrl movement started in the early 1990s, with Bikini Kill as a representative band, and many of these women credited Jett as a role model and inspiration.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 1997, Jett was featured on the "We Will Fall: The Iggy Pop Tribute" album. She performed a cover of the Johnny O'Keefe song "Wild One" (or "Real Wild Child"). Jett worked with members of the punk rock band the Gits, whose lead singer and lyricist, Mia Zapata, had been raped and murdered in 1993. The results of their collaboration was a live album, "Evil Stig" and a single, "Bob", whose earnings were contributed to the investigation of Zapata's murder. To this end, the band and Jett appeared on the television show "America's Most Wanted", appealing to the public for information. The case was solved in 2004, when Zapata's murderer, Jesus Mezquia, was brought to trial and convicted.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett is a guest artist on Marky Ramone and the Intruders' 1999 album "The Answer to Your Problems?" on the track "Don't Blame Me". She is a guest vocalist on Peaches' album "Impeach My Bush" on the tracks "Boys Wanna Be Her" and "You Love It".


title: Joan Jett

text: At an October 2001 9/11 benefit in Red Bank, New Jersey, Jett and Springsteen appeared together on stage for the first time and played "Light of Day".


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2004, Jett and Laguna produced the album "No Apologies" by the pop punk band the Eyeliners, after signing them. Jett also guested on the track "Destroy" and made a cameo appearance in its music video.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2005, Jett and Laguna signed punk rockers the Vacancies and produced their second album, "A Beat Missing or a Silence Added" (reaching the top 20 in CMJ Music Charts), and their third album in 2007, "Tantrum". That same year, she was recruited by Steven Van Zandt to host her own radio show on Van Zandt's "Underground Garage" radio channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. She hosted a four-hour show titled "Joan Jett's Radio Revolution", broadcast every Saturday and Sunday. The program moved from Sirius 25 ("Underground Garage") to Sirius 28 shortly before being canceled in June 2008.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2005, Jett and Laguna celebrated the 25th anniversary of Blackheart Records with a sellout show at Manhattan's Webster Hall.


title: Joan Jett

text: In June 2006, Jett released her album "Sinner", on Blackheart Records. To support the album, the band appeared on the 2006 Warped Tour and on a fall 2006 tour with Eagles of Death Metal. Various other bands such as Antigone Rising, Valient Thorr, the Vacancies, Throw Rag and Riverboat Gamblers were to have joined the tour for a handful of dates each. Jett sang a duet with Chase Noles on "Tearstained Letters", a song on the Heart Attacks' 2006 album, "Hellbound and Heartless".


title: Joan Jett

text: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts headlined the Albuquerque, New Mexico Freedom Fourth celebration on July 4, 2007, with an estimated crowd of 65,000 in attendance at the annual outdoor event. In November 2007, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts appeared with Motörhead and Alice Cooper in a UK arena tour; Jett opened eight American shows on Aerosmith's 2007 World Tour.


title: Joan Jett

text: Following the Dave Clark Five's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on March 10, 2008, Jett, as part of the ceremony, closed the program with a performance of the Dave Clark Five's 1964 hit "Bits and Pieces". Joan Jett & the Blackhearts appeared on several dates of the True Colors tour in the summer of 2008. She opened for Def Leppard in August. On November 19, 2009, Mattel released a Joan Jett Barbie doll. Her name and likeness was used with her permission.


title: Joan Jett

text: Joan Jett & the Blackhearts were part of the lineup for the Falls Music & Arts Festival, December 29 through January 1, 2010, in Australia.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett was an executive producer for the film "The Runaways", which chronicled the Runaways' career. It was written and directed by Floria Sigismondi, who has directed videos for Marilyn Manson, the White Stripes and David Bowie. Production of the movie began filming around "Twilight"'s Kristen Stewart's filming schedule, (i.e. of the sequels "" and ""). Stewart played Jett in the film. In order to prepare for the role, Stewart met Jett around January 2009. In an interview, Stewart revealed that she hoped to be able to sing some songs in the film. The film explores the relationship between Jett and Runaways' lead singer, Cherie Currie, played by Dakota Fanning, and premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2010. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts appeared at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, at Harry-O's, to promote the film.


title: Joan Jett

text: In March 2010, she released a 2-LP/CD "Greatest Hits" album with four newly re-recorded songs, as well as a hardcover biography, spanning her career from the Runaways to the present day. In June 2010, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts opened for Green Day on their UK tour alongside acts such as Frank Turner and Paramore. The band was the opening act for Aerosmith's September 2010 Canadian tour.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett, along with the Blackhearts, released the album "Unvarnished" on September 30, 2013. The album reached "Billboard"'s Top 50. It included songs dealing with the death of her parents and other people. August 1 was declared Joan Jett day in West Hollywood. She was named West Hollywood's Rock Legend.


title: Joan Jett

text: Former Blackhearts drummer Lee Crystal (born Lee Jamie Sackett in 1956 in Brooklyn, New York) died from complications of multiple sclerosis on November 5, 2013, at the age of 57.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett starred in and was the executive producer of the film "Undateable John", which was released in 2014. In April 2014, Jett fronted the remaining members of Nirvana for a performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She joined the band again later that night for its surprise concert at Saint Vitus. In April 2014, Jett was the first woman to win the Golden God Award. Former bandmates Cherie Currie and Lita Ford supported her. On April 24, 2014, "Alternative Press" magazine held its first-ever Alternative Press Music Awards, and Jett received the AP Icon Award. On July 12, 2014, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts performed at Tropicana Field after the baseball game in St. Petersburg, Florida. On October 29, 2014, Jett sang the U.S. national anthem at the New York Knicks vs. the Chicago Bulls basketball game. Jett and Hot Topic released Jett's first clothing line in 2014. It consists of jackets, shirts, pants, and a sweater.


title: Joan Jett

text: On April 15, 2015, Jett & the Blackhearts opened for the Who, kicking off their "The Who Hits 50!" 2015 North American tour in Tampa, Florida. The Blackhearts opened for the Who for 42 dates in the U.S. and Canada, ending November 4 in Philadelphia. On July 4, 2015, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts were part of the Foo Fighters' 20th anniversary show at the RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.


title: Joan Jett

text: In September 2018, Jett signed a music distribution deal with Sony Music's Legacy Recordings, making her catalogue officially available for streaming.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett, along with the Blackhearts, was scheduled to join Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard on the 2020 The Stadium Tour as an opening act along with Poison however tour was postponed to the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021 it was announced that tour was again postponed and will now happen in the summer of 2022. Jett announced that she will embark on a North American tour in the fall of 2021. The tour ended on September 28, 2021 at the Paramount in Huntington, NY.


title: Joan Jett

text: On May 14, 2021, it was announced that to celebrate the 40th anniversaries of Jett's first two albums, "Bad Reputation" and "I Love Rock & Roll", Z2 Comics was releasing two graphic novels titled "Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - 40x40: Bad Reputation/I Love Rock 'n' Roll" that will bring Jett's "songs to life as 20 vivid stories" by female writers and artists in the comic book industry. The books were released in November 2021.


title: Joan Jett

text: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts released "Changeup" on March 25, 2022, the first acoustic album ever recorded by the band, featuring "Bad Reputation" and "Crimson and Clover".


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett has long supported animal rights activism and organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). For Valentine's Day 2022, PETA created a (Black)Heart-Shaped Pizza as a limited-time collaboration with a Los Angeles pizza shop, PIZZANISTA!


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett is a sports fan and has remained actively involved in the sports world. "Bad Reputation" was used by Ultimate Fighting Championship's Women's Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey as her walkout song at the pay-per-view event UFC 157 and is her current theme music in WWE. In April 2019, Jett performed "Bad Reputation" at WWE's WrestleMania 35 as Rousey was making her entrance. Her cover of "Love Is All Around" (the theme song of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show") was used by the NCAA to promote the Women's Final Four, as well as the song "Unfinished Business", which was never commercially released. "Love Is All Around" gained substantial radio play and became the number one requested song without a supporting album. Jett supplied theme songs for the ESPN X Games premiere and has contributed music to all their games since. At Cal Ripken Jr.'s request she sang the U.S. national anthem at the Baltimore Orioles game in which he tied Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. She also sang the national anthem at the final game played at Memorial Stadium. From 2006 to 2015, the melody for her song "I Hate Myself for Loving You" was used as the theme music for "NBC Sunday Night Football" with re-worked lyrics and retitled "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night". Beginning with the 2019 season, Jett performs the song with Carrie Underwood in the opener of Sunday Night Football games.


title: Joan Jett

text: she has been a consistent supporter of the United States Armed Forces throughout her career and has toured for the United Service Organizations for over 20 years, and even performed at the United States Military Academy. She often explains that while she doesn't like war, she loves the military.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 1983, musical satirist "Weird Al" Yankovic released a parody of "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" entitled "I Love Rocky Road", changing the singer's passion for rock music with that for ice cream.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2019 British blogger "Ladbaby" released a parody of I love Rock 'n' Roll, changing the singer's passion for rock music with that for sausage rolls. "I love Sausage Rolls" became the Christmas No.1 in the UK.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett's first appearance on film is in the 1981 live concert film "Urgh! A Music War", performing "Bad Reputation" with the Blackhearts at the Ritz in New York City.


title: Joan Jett

text: She made her acting debut in 1987, co-starring with Gena Rowlands and Michael J. Fox in the Paul Schrader film "Light of Day". She has appeared in independent films, including "The Sweet Life" and "Boogie Boy".


title: Joan Jett

text: In 1997, she appeared on the sitcom "Ellen", in the episode "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah", performing the title song.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2000, Jett appeared in the Broadway production of "The Rocky Horror Show" in the role of Columbia. That same year, Jett appeared on "Walker, Texas Ranger" as an ex-CIA agent turned assassin hired to kill Walker and Alex.


title: Joan Jett

text: From 2000 to 2003, Jett hosted a showcase of new film and video shorts, "Independent Eye", for Maryland Public Television.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2004, Jett narrated a short film, "Godly Boyish", about two teenagers who share suicidal fantasies.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2008, Jett made a cameo appearance in Darren Lynn Bousman's rock opera/file "Repo! The Genetic Opera" as the guitarist in Shilo's room during the piece "Seventeen". Also in 2008, she appeared in the "" episode "" as a rock-and-roll talk show host who is murdered.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett played Betsy Neal in the film "Big Driver". The film, based on Stephen King's novella of the same name, premiered on Lifetime on October 18, 2014.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett was the subject of a documentary, "Bad Reputation", which was released in theaters and streaming on September 28, 2018.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett's signature guitar is a white Gibson Melody Maker, which she has played on all her hits since 1977. Jett bought her first Melody Maker from Eric Carmen, following the breakup of the Raspberries. In regard to her white Melody Maker, the singer once stated:


title: Joan Jett

text: In The Runaways I was using a blond Les Paul. It's beautiful, and I still have it, but it's heavy as shit. I jump and run around a lot onstage, and it was really getting to my shoulder, so I was looking for a lighter guitar. I heard from one of our road crew that Eric Carmen from the Raspberries was selling a Melody Maker, so I ended up buying it. Now, this is the guitar that he played on "Go All the Way" and all those [Raspberries] hits. And then I played it on "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", "Crimson and Clover", "Do You Want to Touch Me", "Bad Reputation" ...all those early records. Then I took it off the road because I got nervous that someone was gonna steal it or break it. It's so beautiful. It's white, has no stickers on it, and there are cracks in the paint and yellowing from age or club cigarettes. It's an unbelievable-looking guitar. I have it in a closet and I take it out occasionally to record. But I don't even need to use it to record anymore, because I have a guitar that sounds pretty much like it. I'm actually kind of afraid to bring out the original. It's got a great heritage. It's a guitar full of hits.


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2008 Gibson released the "Joan Jett Signature Melody Maker". It differs from Jett's model by having a single burstbucker 3 humbucker pickup, an ebony fretboard and a double-cutaway body in white with a black vinyl pickguard. It also features a kill switch in place of a pickup selector. It retails for $839. There is now also a "Blackheart" version of this guitar introduced in 2010. All specs are the same, but it is finished in black, with red and pearl heart inlays.


title: Joan Jett

text: In June 2019, Gibson announced and released a third signature guitar for Jett, which is a wine-colored ES-339. The guitar was released after two years of research and development with Jett.


title: Joan Jett

text: Jett had, for years, refused to either confirm or deny rumors that she is lesbian or bisexual. In a 1994 interview with "Out" magazine she said, "I'm not saying no, I'm not saying yes, I'm saying believe what you want. Assume away—go ahead." In 2006, she responded to an interviewer who had asked her when she had "come out" as a lesbian by saying, "I never made any kind of statement about my personal life on any level. I never made any proclamations. So I don't know where people are getting that from."


title: Joan Jett

text: In 2016, former Runaways guitarist Lita Ford revealed in her memoir that she quit the band because the other members were "all gay" saying "First I found out that Sandy, the one I had bonded with the most, was a lesbian. Then I found out that Cherie was messing around with Joan. I was so freaked out that I quit the band. When I found out that the girls were all gay in the band, I wasn't sure how to take it. I didn't know what it was."


title: Joan Jett

text: In a 2018 interview with "the New York Times", when asked about how an LGBT film festival did not want to show her documentary because she was not "out", Jett said: "They don't want the movie there because I don't declare? [Holding up her necklace] What the [expletive] is that? Two labryses, or axes, crossing each other, inside of two women's symbols crossing each other. It's not been off since I got it. And I wear this one every day. [She turns around, lifts her shirt and reveals a tattoo with similar female symbols on her lower back.] I don't know how much more you can declare."


title: Joan Jett

text: In July 2015, Jackie Fuchs (formerly Jackie Fox of The Runaways) alleged that Kim Fowley raped her on New Year's Eve 1975, at a party following a Runaways performance at an Orange County club. Sixteen years old at the time, Fuchs was reportedly given Quaaludes by a man she thought was a roadie, and while she was incapacitated, Fowley allegedly raped her in full view of a group of partygoers and her bandmates Currie, West, and Jett; Ford was not present. "Look Away", a documentary about sexual abuse in the rock music industry features Fuchs' story.


title: Joan Jett

text: Fuchs said that her last memory of the night was seeing Currie and Jett staring at her as Fowley raped her. Kari Krome (co-founder and songwriter for the group) stated that she saw, "Jett and Currie sitting off to the side of the room for part of the time, snickering" during the rape. In 2015, Jett stated "Anyone who truly knows me understands that if I was aware of a friend or bandmate being violated, I would not stand by while it happened. For a group of young teenagers thrust into '70s rock stardom there were relationships that were bizarre, but I was not aware of this incident. Obviously Jackie's story is extremely upsetting and although we haven't spoken in decades, I wish her peace and healing." Victory Tischler-Blue (Fuchs's replacement in the group) said that all the members of the group "have always been aware of this ugly event".


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The United States had an official estimated resident population of 331,893,745 on July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This figure includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia but excludes the population of five unincorporated U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands) as well as several minor island possessions. The United States is the third most populous country in the world. The Census Bureau showed a population increase of 0.12% for the twelve-month period ending in July 2021, below the world average annual rate of 0.9%. The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2021 is 1.664 children per woman, which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th centuryat a growth rate of about 1.3% a yearfrom about 76 million in 1900 to 281 million in 2000. It is estimated to have reached the 200 million mark in 1967, and the 300 million mark on October 17, 2006. Foreign-born immigration caused the U.S. population to continue its rapid increase, with the foreign-born population doubling from almost 20 million in 1990 to over 45 million in 2015, representing one-third of the population increase. The U.S. population grew by 1.6 million from 2018 to 2019, with 38% of growth from immigration. Population growth is fastest among minorities as a whole, and according to the Census Bureau's estimation for 2020, 50% of U.S. children under the age of 18 are members of ethnic minority groups.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: As of 2020, white people (including Hispanic whites) numbered 204,277,273 or 61.6% of the population and Non-Latino whites make up 57.8% of the country's population.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Latino Americans accounted for 51.1% of the total national population growth between 2010 and 2020, increasing from 50.5 million in 2010 to 62.1 million in 2020. The Hispanic or Latino population increased by 23% between 2010 and 2020, an increase of more than 11.6 million. Immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants are expected to provide most of the U.S. population gains in the decades ahead.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2020, it was reported that 51.0% of births were to non-Hispanic white mothers. In 2021, the percentage increased to 51.5%.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The 12 month ending general fertility rate increased from 56.6 to 57.0 in 2022 Q1 compared to 2021 Q4.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: On April 1, 2020, the United States had a population of 331,449,281, according to the 2020 United States census.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The following demographic statistics are from the "CIA World Factbook" estimated , unless otherwise indicated.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The median age of the total population as of 2021 is 38.8 years; the male median age is 37.7 years; the female median age is 39.8 years.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 1800 the average U.S. woman had 7.04 children; by the first decade of the 1900s, this number had already decreased to 3.56. Since the early 1970s the birth rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 with 1.72 children per woman in 2018.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The drop in the U.S. fertility rate from 2.08 per woman in 2007 to 1.76 in 2017 was mostly due to the declining birth rate of Hispanics, teenagers, and young women, although the birth rate for older women rose.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The dependency ratio is the age-population ratio of people who are normally not in the labor force (the dependent population, which includes those aged 0 to 14 and 65 and older) to those who are (the productive part ages 15 to 64). It is used to gauge the strain on the populace that is productive.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The average life expectancy in the United States has been on a decline since 2014. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cites three main reasons: a 72% increase in overdoses in the last decade (including a 30% increase in opioid overdoses from July 2016 to September 2017, but did not differentiate between accidental overdose with a legal prescription and overdose with opioids obtained illegally and/or combined with illegal drugs i.e., heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc.), a ten-year increase in liver disease (the rate for men age 25 to 34 increased by 8% per year; for women, by 11% per year), and a 33% increase in suicide rates since 1999.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: From 2019 to 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to approximately 61% of the decrease in life expectancy in the United States. While increases in mortality from unintentional injuries, heart disease, homicide, and diabetes contributed to 11.7%, 5.8%, 2.9%, and 2.8% of the decrease in life expectancy from 2019 to 2020, respectively. Life expectancy has also varied by racial and ethnic group, with Non-Hispanic Asians having the highest life expectancy and Non-Hispanic American Indians having the lowest. In 2021, life expectancy at birth in the United States fell for the second year in a row, the first two-year drop since 1961-1963.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The population is highly urbanized, with 82.3% of the population residing in cities and suburbs. Large urban clusters are spread throughout the eastern half of the United States (particularly the Great Lakes area, northeast, east, and southeast) and the western tier states; mountainous areas, principally the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian chain, deserts in the southwest, the dense boreal forests in the extreme north, and the central prairie states are less densely populated; Alaska's population is concentrated along its southern coast – with particular emphasis on the city of Anchorage – and Hawaii's is centered on the island of Oahu. California and Texas are the most populous states, as the mean center of U.S. population has consistently shifted westward and southward. New York City is the most populous city in the United States and has been since at least 1790.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In the U.S. territories, population centers include the San Juan metro area in Puerto Rico, Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, and the island of Tutuila in American Samoa.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: A total of 3,659,289 babies were born in 2021, a 1% increase from 2020. Additionally, researchers also looked at births by race and found that White and Hispanic women each saw the number of births increase by about 2% from 2020 to 2021. Meanwhile, Black and Asian women saw the number of births decline by 2.4% and 2.5%, respectively, over the same period, while American Indian/Alaskan Native women saw their numbers fall by 3.2%. It also marks the first rise in births since 2014. Prior to this report, the total number of births had been decreasing by an average of 2% per year. However, the total fertility rate (the number of births a hypothetical group of 1,000 people would have over their lifetimes) was 1,663.5 births per 1,000 women. This is still below the replacement level, the level a population needs to replace itself, which is 2,100 births per 1,000 women.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: "Note: Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number." Also note that growth arrows indicate an increase or decrease in the number of births, not in the fertility rate.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents (including many eligible to become citizens), 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. Among current living immigrants to the U.S., the top five countries of birth are Mexico (25% of immigrants), China (6%), India (6%), the Philippines (5%) and El Salvador (3%). Some 13% of current living immigrants come from Europe and Canada, and 10% from the Caribbean. Among new arrivals, Asian immigrants have been more numerous than Hispanic immigrants since 2010; in 2017, 37.4% of immigrant arrivals were Asian, and 26.6% were Hispanic. Until 2017 and 2018, the United States led the world in refugee resettlement for decades, admitting more refugees than the rest of the world combined. From fiscal year 1980 until 2017, 55% of refugees came from Asia, 27% from Europe, 13% from Africa, and 4% from Latin America, fleeing war and persecution.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: As of 2017, 13.6% (44.4 million) of the population was foreign born – an increase from 4.7% in 1970 but less than the 1890 record of 14.8%. 45% of the foreign born population were naturalized US citizens. 23% (10.3 million) of the foreign born community is undocumented, accounting for 3.2% of the total population. According to the 2010 census, Latin America and the Caribbean is the largest region-of-birth group, accounting for 53% of the foreign born population. As of 2018 this region is still the largest source of immigrants to the United States In 2018, there were almost 90 million immigrants and U.S. born children of immigrants (second-generation Americans) in the United States, accounting for 28% of the overall U.S. population. In 2018, 1,096,611 immigrants were granted either permanent or temporary legal residence in the United States


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The United States Census Bureau's 2017 projections were produced using the cohort-component method. In the cohort-component method, the components of population change (fertility, mortality, and net migration) are projected separately for each birth cohort (persons born in a given year). The base population is advanced each year by using projected survival rates and net international migration. Each year, a new birth cohort is added to the population by applying the projected fertility rates to the female population.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 1900, when the U.S. population was 76 million, there were 66.8 million white Americans in the United States, representing 88% of the total population, 8.8 million Black Americans, with about 90% of them still living in Southern states, and slightly more than 500,000 Hispanics.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Under the law, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has increased, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007. Around a million people legally immigrated to the United States per year in the 1990s, up from 250,000 per year in the 1950s.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 1900, non-Hispanic whites comprised almost 97% of the population of the 10 largest U.S. cities. The Census Bureau reported that minorities (including Hispanic whites) made up 50.4% of the children born in the U.S. between July 2010 and July 2011, compared to 37% in 1990.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2014, the state with the lowest fertility rate was Rhode Island, with a rate of 1.56, while Utah had the greatest rate with a rate of 2.33. This correlates with the ages of the states' populations: Rhode Island has the ninth-oldest median age in the US39.2while Utah has the youngest29.0.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2017, the U.S. birth rate remains well below the replacement level needed – at least 2.1 children per woman so as not to experience population decreases – as white American births fell in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Among non-Hispanic white women, no states had a fertility rate above the replacement level. Among non-Hispanic Black women, 12 states reached above the replacement level needed. Among Hispanic women, 29 states did. For non-Hispanic white women, the highest total fertility rate was in Utah, at 2.099, and the lowest in the District of Columbia, at 1.012. Among non-Hispanic Black women, the highest total fertility rate was in Maine, at 4.003, and the lowest in Wyoming, at 1.146. For Hispanic women, the highest total fertility rate was in Alabama, at 3.085, and the lowest in Vermont, at 1.200, and Maine, at 1.281. Due to the aging and low birth rates among white people, deaths now outnumber births among white people (non-Hispanic) in more than half the states in the country.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Median age of the U.S. population through history. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce. Bureau of Census, United States Census Bureau and The World Factbook.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. Sources: Ansley J. Coale, Zelnik and National Center for Health Statistics.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Life expectancy in the United States from 1901 to 2015. Source: Our World In Data and the United Nations.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The United States has dozens of major cities, including 31 "global cities" of all types, with 10 in the "alpha" group of global cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Atlanta. , the United States had 51 metropolitan areas with a population of over 1,000,000 people each. (See Table of United States Metropolitan Statistical Areas.)


title: Demographics of the United States

text: , about 250 million Americans live in or around urban areas. That means more than three-quarters of the U.S. population shares just about three percent of the U.S. land area.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The following table shows the populations of the top twenty metropolitan areas. Note Denver and Baltimore have over 2.5 million residents in their metro areas, and the San Juan (Puerto Rico) metro area has more than 2 million residents.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The United States Census Bureau collects racial data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification. Many other countries count multiple races based on origin while America compiles multiple dozens of ethnicity groups into skin color grouping them together. The racial classifications and definitions used by the U.S. Census Bureau are:


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Data about race and ethnicity are self-reported to the Census Bureau. Since the 2000 census, Congress has authorized people to identify themselves according to more than one racial classification by selecting more than one category. Only one ethnicity may be selected, however, because the U.S. Census recognizes only two ethnicitiesHispanic and Non-Hispanicwhich are mutually exclusive since you can be one or the other, but not both. The Census Bureau defines "Hispanic" as any person who has an ancestral connection to Latin America.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to the United States Census Bureau website, the racial composition of the United States in July 1, 2021 was:


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to the 2013–2017 American Community Survey, the racial composition of the United States in 2017 was:


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Data are shown for the White, Black or African American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and Some other race alone populations.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines "Hispanic or Latino" as a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. People who identify with the terms "Hispanic" or "Latino" are those who classify themselves in one of the specific Hispanic or Latino categories listed on the decennial census questionnaire and various Census Bureau survey questionnaires – "Mexican, Mexican Am., Chicano" or "Puerto Rican" or "Cuban" – as well as those who indicate that they are "another Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin." People who identify their origin as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: As of 2017, there are 2,098,763 American Indian and Alaska Native people in the United States, representing 0.7% of the U.S. population. There are 573 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States. As of 2000, the largest groups in the United States by population were Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, Sioux, Chippewa, Apache, Blackfeet, Iroquois, and Pueblo.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: There were 22.1 million veterans in 2009, meaning that less than 10% of Americans served in the Armed Forces.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2010, "The Washington Post" estimated that there were 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. As of 2017, Pew Research reported that there an estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: A report by the U.S. Census Bureau projects a decrease in the ratio of Whites between 2010 and 2050, from 79.5% to 74.0%. At the same time, Non-Hispanic Whites are projected to no longer make up a majority of the population by 2045, but will remain the largest single ethnic group. In 2050 they will compose 46.3% of the population. Non-Hispanic whites made up 85% of the population in 1960. However, white Americans overall are still projected to make up over 70% of the population in 2050.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The report foresees the Hispanic or Latino population rising from 16% today to 30% by 2050, the Black percentage barely rising from 13.2% to 14.4%, and Asian Americans upping their 4.6% share to 7.8%. The United States had a population of 310 million people in October 2010, and is projected to reach 400 million by 2039 and 439 million in 2050. It is further projected that 82% of the increase in population from 2005 to 2050 will be due to immigrants and their children.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Of the nation's children in 2050, 62% are expected to be of a minority ethnicity, up from 44% today. Approximately 39% are projected to be Hispanic or Latino (up from 22% in 2008), and 38% are projected to be single-race, non-Hispanic Whites (down from 56% in 2008). Racial and ethnic minorities surpassed non-Hispanic whites as the largest group of U.S. children under 5 years old in 2015.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The country's racial profile will be vastly different, and although whites will remain the single largest ethnic group in the U.S., they will no longer be a majority excluding White Hispanics by 2055 according to Pew Research Center. Growth in the Hispanic and Asian populations is predicted to almost triple over the next 40 years. By 2055, the breakdown is estimated to be 48% non-Hispanic white, 24% Hispanic, 16% Black, and 14% Asian.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: , 14% of the United States' population is foreign born, compared to just 5% in 1965. Nearly 39 million immigrants have come to the U.S. since 1965, with most coming from Asia and Latin America. The 2015 Census Report predicts that the percentage of the U.S. population that is foreign-born will continue to increase, reaching 19% by 2060. This increase in the foreign-born population will account for a large share of the overall population growth.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The average person in the U.S. of 2060 is likely to be older than the average person of 2018 today, and almost one in four people will be 65 or older.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Note: "Minority" refers to people who reported their ethnicity and race as something other than non-Hispanic White alone in the decennial census.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The 2000 U.S. Census counted same-sex couples in an oblique way; asking the sex and the relationship to the "main householder", whose sex was also asked. Community Marketing & Insights, an organization specializing in analyzing gay demographic data, reported, based on this count in the 2000 census and in the 2000 supplementary survey, that same-sex couples comprised between 1.0% and 1.1% of U.S. couples in 2000. A 2006 report issued by The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation concluded that the number of same-sex couples in the U.S. grew from 2000 to 2005, from nearly 600,000 couples in 2000 to almost 777,000 in 2005. A 2006 UCLA study reported that 4.1% of Americans aged 18–45 identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: A 2011 report by the Williams Institute estimated that nine million adults identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, representing 3.5% of the population over 18. A spokesperson said that, until recently, few studies have tried to distinguish people who had occasionally undertaken homosexual behavior or entertained homosexual thoughts, from people who identified as lesbian or gay. (Older estimates have varied depending on methodology and timing; see Demographics of sexual orientation for a list of studies.)


title: Demographics of the United States

text: As of 2017, an estimated 44,525,458 residents of the United States were foreign-born, 13.5% of the country's total population. This demographic includes recent as well as longstanding immigrants; statistically Europeans have resided in the US longer than those from other regions with approximately 66% having arrived prior to 2000.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: As of April 2015, the U.S. State Department estimated that 8.7 million American citizens live overseas. Americans living abroad are not counted in the U.S. Census unless they are a federal government employees or dependents of a federal employee. A 2010 paper estimated the number of civilian Americans living abroad to be around 4 million. So-called "accidental Americans" are citizens of a country other than the United States who may also be considered U.S. citizens or be eligible for U.S. citizenship under specific laws but are not aware of having such status (or became aware of it only recently).


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The table below is based mainly on selected data as reported to the United States Census Bureau. It only includes the voluntary self-reported membership of religious bodies with 750,000 or more. The definition of a member is determined by each religious body. , the US census bureau reported that about 13% of the population did not identify themselves as a member of any religion.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In a Pew Research Survey performed in 2012, Americans without a religion (atheists, agnostics, nothing in particular, etc.) approached the numbers of Evangelical Protestant Americans with almost 20% of Americans being nonreligious (compared to just over 26% being Evangelical Protestant). If this current growth rate continues, by 2050, around 51% of Americans will not have a religion.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Surveys conducted in 2014 and 2019 by Pew indicated that the percentage of Americans unaffiliated with a religion increased from 16% in 2007 to 23% in 2014 and 26% of the population in 2019.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to statistical data made by the Pew Research Center in 2021 about 63% of the US population is Christian, 28% is Unaffiliated, 2% is Jewish, 1% is Buddhist, 1% follows Islam and 3% follow other religions such as Hinduism, traditional religions and others. Currently, the United States has the largest Christian population in the world (approximately 230-250 million) and the largest Protestant Christian population (approximately 150-160 million). The country also has the second largest Jewish community in the world (after Israel) and the largest Buddhist and Hindu communities in the West, as well as the largest number of followers of Islam in North America. The country has about 64 million non-affiliates (only China and Japan have more).


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to Pew Research Center study released in 2018, by 2040, Islam will surpass Judaism to become the second largest religion in the US due to higher immigration and birth rates.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The United States government does not collect religious data in its census. The survey below, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008, was a random digit-dialed telephone survey of 54,461 American residential households in the contiguous United States. The 1990 sample size was 113,723; 2001 sample size was 50,281.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Adult respondents were asked the open-ended question, "What is your religion, if any?". Interviewers did not prompt or offer a suggested list of potential answers. The religion of the spouse or partner was also asked. If the initial answer was "Protestant" or "Christian" further questions were asked to probe which particular denomination. About one-third of the sample was asked more detailed demographic questions.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Religious Self-Identification of the U.S. Adult Population: 1990, 2001, 2008Figures are not adjusted for refusals to reply; investigators suspect refusals are possibly more representative of "no religion" than any other group.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2020, the median household income in the United States was around $67,521, 2.9 percent less than the 2019 median of $69,560 Household and personal income depends on variables such as race, number of income earners, educational attainment and marital status.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Social classes in the United States lack distinct boundaries and may overlap. Even their existence (when distinguished from economic strata) is controversial. The following table provides a summary of some prominent academic theories on the stratification of American society:


title: Demographics of the United States

text: A definitive recent study of US generational cohorts was done by Schuman and Scott (2012) in which a broad sample of adults of all ages was asked, "What world events are especially important to you?" They found that 33 events were mentioned with great frequency. When the ages of the respondents were correlated with the expressed importance rankings, seven (some put 8 or 9) distinct cohorts became evident.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Subdivided groups are present when peak boom years or inverted peak bust years are present, and may be represented by a normal or inverted bell-shaped curve (rather than a straight curve). The boom subdivided cohorts may be considered as "pre-peak" (including peak year) and "post-peak". The year 1957 was the baby boom peak with 4.3 million births and 122.7 fertility rate. Although post-peak births (such as trailing edge boomers) are in decline, and sometimes referred to as a "bust", there are still a "relatively" large number of births. The dearth-in-birth bust cohorts include those up to the valley birth year, and those including and beyond, leading up to the subsequent normal birth rate. The baby boom began around 1943 to 1946.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: From the decline in U.S. birth rates starting in 1958 and the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, the Baby Boomer normal distribution curve is negatively skewed. The trend in birth rates from 1958 to 1961 show a tendency to end late in the decade at approximately 1969, thus returning to pre-WWII levels, with 12 years of rising and 12 years of declining birth rates. Pre-war birth rates were defined as anywhere between 1939 and 1941 by demographers such as the Taeuber's, Philip M. Hauser and William Fielding Ogburn.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2021, the population of the United States grew at a slower rate than in any other year since the country's founding. The U.S. population grew only 0.1% from the previous year before. The United States' population has grown by less than one million people for the first time since 1937, with the lowest numeric growth since at least 1900, when the Census Bureau began yearly population estimates. Apart from the previous few years, when population growth plummeted to historically low levels, the slowest pace of increase in the twentieth century occurred between 1918 and 1919, when the influenza epidemic and World War I were both in full swing. Slower population growth has been the norm in the United States for some years, owing to lower fertility and net international migration, as well as rising mortality from an aging population.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: To put it another way, since the mid-2010s, births and net international migration have been dropping while deaths have risen. These trends have a cumulative effect of reduced population increase.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend, resulting in a historically slow population increase in 2021.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The birth rate is 11.0 births/1,000 population, as of 2020. This was the lowest birth rate since records began. There were 3,613,647 births in 2020, this was the lowest number of births since 1980.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2020, the CDC reported that there were 1,676,911 marriages in 2020, compared to 2019, there were 2,015,603 marriages. Marriage rates varied significantly by state, ranging from 3.2 marriages/1,000 population in California to 21.0 marriages/1,000 population in Nevada.*


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2009, "Time magazine" reported that 40% of births were to unmarried women. The following is a breakdown by race for unwed births: 17% Asian, 29% White, 53% Hispanics (of any race), 66% Native Americans, and 72% Black American.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: According to the CDC, in 2020, there were at least, 1,461,121 births to unmarried women. In 2020, 40.5% of births were to unmarried women. The following is breakdown by race for unwed births: 28.4% Non-Hispanic White, 70.4% Non-Hispanic Black, and 52.8% Hispanic (of any race).


title: Demographics of the United States

text: A study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) found that more than half (51 percent) of live hospital births in 2008 and 2011 were male.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Per U.S. federal government data released in March 2011, births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the largest drop in the U.S. for any two-year period since the 1970s.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Births have declined for three consecutive years, and are now 7% below the peak in 2007. This drop has continued through 2010, according to data released by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics in June 2011. Numerous experts have suggested that this decline is largely a reflection of unfavorable economic conditions. This connection between birth rates and economic downturns partly stems from the fact that American birth rates have now fallen to levels that are comparable to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Teen birth rates in the U.S. are at the lowest level in U.S. history. In fact, teen birth rates in the U.S. have consistently decreased since 1991 through 2011, except for a brief increase between 2005 and 2007. The other aberration from this otherwise steady decline in teen birth rates is the 6% decrease in birth rates for 15- to 19-year-olds between 2008 and 2009. Despite these years of decrease, U.S. teen birth rates are still higher than in other developed nations. Racial differences prevail with teen birth and pregnancy rates as well. The American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic Black teen pregnancy rates are more than double the non-Hispanic white teen birth rate.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: For those interested in a look at where the U.S. population is headed over a longer term, the link below to a recent article offers a preliminary overview of census trends. Yes, a multi-racial democracy awaits, if we can keep it, but also a society with significant demographic pitfalls. Here is a quote summarizing key points:These trends include an unprecedented stagnation in population growth, a continued decrease in Americans' geographical mobility, more pronounced population aging, a first-time decline in the size of the white population, and rising racial and ethnic diversity among millennials, Gen Z, and younger groups, which now comprise a majority of the nation's residents.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: The U6 unemployment rate was 8.6 percent. The U6 unemployment rate counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U3 rate), but also counts "marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons." Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U6 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the "marginally attached workers" include those who have become discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work. The age considered for this calculation is 16 years and over.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: Urban Americans have more job opportunities than those in more rural areas. From 2008 to 2018, 72% of the nation's employment growth occurred in cities with more than one million residents, which account for 56% of the overall population.


title: Demographics of the United States

text: In 2021, 27.1 million Americans said they were living in a different place than a year before, compared to 29.8 million in 2020. This reflects an 8.4% mover rate, the lowest recorded in more than 70 years.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: "Happy Birthday to You", also known as "Happy Birthday", is a song traditionally sung to celebrate a person's birthday. According to the 1998 "Guinness World Records", it is the most recognised song in the English language, followed by "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow". The song's base lyrics have been translated into at least 18 languages. The melody of "Happy Birthday to You" comes from the song "Good Morning to All", which has traditionally been attributed to American sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893, although the claim that the sisters composed the tune is disputed.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The song is in the public domain in the United States and the European Union. Warner Chappell Music had previously claimed copyright on the song in the US and collected licensing fees for its use; in 2015 the copyright claim was declared invalid and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing fees.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Patty Hill was a kindergarten principal in Louisville, Kentucky developing various teaching methods at the Little Loomhouse, and her sister Mildred was a pianist and composer. The sisters used "Good Morning to All" as a song that young children would find easy to sing. The combination of melody and lyrics in "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print in 1912. None of the early appearances of the "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics included credits or copyright notices. The Summy Company registered a copyright in 1935, crediting authors Preston Ware Orem and Mrs. R. R. Forman. In 1988, Warner/Chappell Music purchased the company owning the copyright for 25 million, with the value of "Happy Birthday" estimated at 5 million. Warner claimed that the United States copyright would not expire until 2030, and that unauthorized public performances of the song are illegal unless royalties are paid. In February 2010, the royalty for a single use was 700. By one estimate, the song is the highest-earning single song in history. In the European Union, the copyright for the song expired on January 1, 2017.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The American copyright status of "Happy Birthday to You" began to draw more attention with the passage of the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998. The Supreme Court upheld the Act in "Eldred v. Ashcroft" in 2003, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer specifically mentioned "Happy Birthday to You" in his dissenting opinion. American law professor Robert Brauneis extensively researched the song and concluded in 2010 that "it is almost certainly no longer under copyright." Good Morning to You Productions sued Warner/Chappell for falsely claiming copyright to the song in 2013. In September 2015, a federal judge declared that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim was invalid, ruling that the copyright registration applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song and not to its lyrics and melody. In 2016, Warner/Chappell settled for $14 million, and the court declared that "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Since the syllable lengths and scansion of people's names may vary, the measure that includes the [NAME] invocation is traditionally notated with a fermata to adapt the meter; however, Vi Hart asserts that this should not be interpreted to be timed "ad libitum" but rather as an additional full beat in that measure.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: <score sound="1">\relative c' { \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"clarinet" \key f \major \time 3/4 \partial 4 c8. c16 | d4 c f | e2 c8. c16 | d4 c g' | f2 c8. c16 | c'4 a f | e( d\fermata) bes'8. bes16 | a4 f g | f2 \bar "|." } \addlyrics { Hap -- py birth -- day to you, Hap -- py birth -- day to you, Hap -- py birth -- day dear [NAME], __ Hap -- py birth -- day to you. }</score>


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: It is traditional, among English-speakers, that at a birthday party, the song "Happy Birthday to You" be sung to the birthday person by the other guests celebrating the birthday, often when presented with a birthday cake. After the song is sung, party guests sometimes add wishes like "and many more!" expressing the hope that the birthday person will enjoy a long life. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, immediately after "Happy Birthday" has been sung, it is traditional for one of the guests to lead with "Hip hip ..." and then for all of the other guests to join in and say "... hooray!" This is normally repeated for a total of three times.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In regions of America and Canada, especially at young children's birthdays, immediately after "Happy Birthday" has been sung, it is not uncommon for the singers segue into "How old are you now? How old are you now? How old are you now-ow, how old are you now?" and then count up: "Are you one? Are you two? Are you ..." until they reach the right age or often, instead of counting, “and many more!” for those who are older.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The music and lyrics are in the public domain in the European Union and the United States. The copyright expired in the European Union on January 1, 2017. A U.S. federal court ruled in 2016 that Warner and Chappell's copyright claim was invalid and there was no other claim to copyright.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: "Happy Birthday to You" dates from the late 19th century, when sisters Patty and Mildred J. Hill introduced the song "Good Morning to All" to Patty's kindergarten class in Kentucky. They published the tune in their 1893 songbook "Song Stories for the Kindergarten" with Chicago publisher Clayton F. Summy. Kembrew McLeod stated that the Hill sisters likely copied the tune and lyrical idea from other popular and similar nineteenth-century songs, including Horace Waters' "Happy Greetings to All", "Good Night to You All" also from 1858, "A Happy New Year to All" from 1875, and "A Happy Greeting to All", published 1885. However, U.S. law professor Robert Brauneis disputes this, noting that these earlier songs had quite different melodies.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The complete text of "Happy Birthday to You" first appeared in print as the final four lines of Edith Goodyear Alger's poem "Roy's Birthday", published in "A Primer of Work and Play", copyrighted by D. C. Heath in 1901, with no reference to the words being sung. The first book including "Happy Birthday" lyrics set to the tune of "Good Morning to All" that bears a date of publication is from 1911 in "The Elementary Worker and His Work", but earlier references exist to a song called "Happy Birthday to You", including an article from 1901 in the "Inland Educator and Indiana School Journal". In 1924, Robert Coleman included "Good Morning to All" in a songbook with the birthday lyrics as a second verse. Coleman also published "Happy Birthday" in "The American Hymnal" in 1933. "Children's Praise and Worship" published the song in 1928, edited by Byers, Byrum, and Koglin.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The Summy Company, publisher of "Good Morning to All", copyrighted piano arrangements by Preston Ware Orem and a second verse by Mrs. R. R. Forman. This served as the legal basis for claiming that Summy Company legally registered the copyright for the song, as well as the later renewal of these copyrights. A 2015 lawsuit found this claim baseless.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Summy Company became the Summy-Birchard Company in 1957, and this became a division of Birch Tree Group Limited in 1970. Warner/Chappell Music acquired Birch Tree Group Limited in 1988 for 25 million. The company continued to insist that one cannot sing the "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics for profit without paying royalties; in 2008, Warner collected about 5,000 per day (2 million per year) in royalties for the song. Warner/Chappell claimed copyright for every use in film, television, radio, and anywhere open to the public, and for any group where a substantial number of those in attendance were not family or friends of the performer. Brauneis cited problems with the song's authorship and the notice and renewal of the copyright, and concluded: "It is almost certainly no longer under copyright."


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In the European Union, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Patty Hill died in 1946 as the last surviving author, so the copyright expired in these countries on January 1, 2017.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: On June 13, 2013, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Nelson filed a putative class action suit in federal court for the Southern District of New York against Warner/Chappell in the name of her production company Good Morning to You Productions. She had paid 1,500 to secure the rights as part of a documentary that she was making about the song and its history. Her complaint relied heavily on Brauneis's research, seeking the return of her money and all royalties collected by the company from other filmmakers since 2009. A week later, "Rupa Marya v. Warner Chappell Music Inc" was filed in the Central District of California. Five weeks later, Nelson refiled the case there, and the cases were combined. In April 2014, Warner's motion to dismiss had been denied without prejudice, and discovery began under an agreed plan with respect to Claim One, declaratory judgment as to whether "Happy Birthday to You" is in the public domain. The court was expected to rule on the motion for summary judgment as to the merits issues on Claim One. A jury trial was requested.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Nelson's attorneys Betsy Manifold and Mark Rifkin presented new evidence on July 28, 2015, one day before a scheduled ruling, which they argued was conclusive proof that the song was in the public domain, "thus making it unnecessary for the Court to decide the scope or validity of the disputed copyrights, much less whether Patty Hill abandoned any copyright she may have had to the lyrics". They had been given access to documents previously held back from them by Warner/Chappell, which included a copy of the 15th edition of "The Everyday Song Book" published in 1927. The book contained "Good Morning and Happy Birthday", but the copy was blurry, obscuring a line of text below the title. Manifold and Rifkin located a clearer copy of an edition published in 1922 that also contained the "Happy Birthday" lyrics. The previously obscured line was revealed to be the credit "Special permission through courtesy of The Clayton F Summy Co.". Manifold and Rifkin argued that the music and lyrics were published without a valid copyright notice as was required at the time, so "Happy Birthday" was in the public domain.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Warner/Chappell disputed the evidence, arguing that, unless there was "necessary authorization from the copyright owner", the "Happy Birthday" lyrics and sheet music would still be subject to common law copyright as an unpublished work, and that it was unknown whether the "special permission" from the Summy Company covered "Good Morning to All", "Happy Birthday", or both, thus alleging that the publication in "The Everyday Song Book" was unauthorized. The company also argued that it was not acting in bad faith in withholding the evidence of the 1927 publication.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: On September 22, 2015, federal judge George H. King ruled that the Warner/Chappell copyright claim over the lyrics was invalid. The 1935 copyright held by Warner/Chappell applied only to a specific piano arrangement of the song, not the lyrics or melody. The court held that the question of whether the 1922 and 1927 publications were authorized, thus placing the song in the public domain, presented questions of fact that would need to be resolved at trial. However, Warner/Chappell had failed to prove that it actually had ever held a copyright to the lyrics, so the court was able to grant summary judgment to the plaintiffs, thus resolving the case.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Some initial news sources characterized the decision as ruling that the song was in the public domain, but the decision did not go so far, holding only that Warner/Chappell did not prove they owned the copyright. However, because there are no other claimants to the copyright, and the copyright to the melody long ago expired, the plaintiffs suggested that the song was "de facto" in the public domain. Also, the judge ruled that the song was not copyrighted by Summy Co., who had written in the song book, "Special permission through courtesy of the Clayton F. Summy Co." Since there was no evidence Summy Co. had copyright on the song, the song is still considered to be in the public domain.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: Before the lawsuit, Warner/Chappell had been earning $2 million a year licensing the song for commercial use, with a notable example the $5,000 paid by the filmmakers of the 1994 documentary "Hoop Dreams" in order to safely distribute the film. On February 8, 2016, Warner/Chappell agreed to pay a settlement of $14 million to those who had licensed the song, and would allow a final judgment declaring the song to be in the public domain, with a final hearing scheduled in March 2016. On June 28, 2016, the final settlement was officially granted and the court declared that the song was in the public domain. The following week, Nelson's short-form documentary "Happy Birthday: My Campaign to Liberate the People's Song" was published online by "The Guardian".


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In the wake of their success, the lawyers involved in the "Happy Birthday" lawsuit filed similar lawsuits regarding "We Shall Overcome" and "This Land Is Your Land".


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: One of the most famous performances of "Happy Birthday to You" was Marilyn Monroe's rendition to U.S. President John F. Kennedy in May 1962. Another notable use was by comedy pianist Victor Borge, who played the song in styles of various composers, or would begin playing Moonlight Sonata, smoothly transitioning into the song.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: The Beatles recorded "Happy Birthday Dear Saturday Club" for the BBC's radio programme's fifth anniversary. This recording is included on the compilation album "On Air – Live at the BBC Volume 2", released in 2013.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In a 1998 episode of the television show "Sports Night", "Intellectual Property", character Dan Rydell sings the song to his co-anchor during a telecast, forcing his network to pay royalties, and causing him to ask his colleagues to choose public-domain songs for him to sing for their birthdays.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In the 1987 documentary "Eyes on the Prize" about the U.S. civil rights movement, there was a birthday party scene in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s discouragement began to lift. After its initial release, the film was unavailable for sale or broadcast for many years because of the cost of clearing many copyrights, of which "Happy Birthday to You" was one. Grants in 2005 for copyright clearances allowed PBS to rebroadcast the film.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: In 2010, the Western classical music conductor Zubin Mehta conducted the orchestra to play variations of "Happy Birthday" in the styles of various Western classical music composers including Wagner, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and in the Viennese, New Orleans and Hungarian composition styles.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: On August 5, 2013, the first anniversary of its landing on Mars, NASA's "Curiosity" rover celebrated its "birthday" when engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center used the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to cause the rover to "sing" Happy Birthday on the Martian surface.


title: Happy Birthday to You

text: During the March 6, 2014 episode of the Comedy Central series "The Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert attempted to sing the song in honor of the 90th anniversary of its 1924 publication, but was prevented to due to the copyright issues. Colbert instead premiered his new "royalty-free" birthday song – which turns out to be a parody of the United States' national anthem, and ends with the stanza "Warner Music can't sue me, and the home of the brave".


title: Richard Feynman

text: Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin'ichirō Tomonaga.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal "Physics World", he was ranked the seventh-greatest physicist of all time.


title: Richard Feynman

text: He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II and became known to a wide public in the 1980s as a member of the Rogers Commission, the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle "Challenger" disaster. Along with his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing and introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He held the Richard C. Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman was a keen popularizer of physics through both books and lectures, including a 1959 talk on top-down nanotechnology called "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" and the three-volume publication of his undergraduate lectures, "The Feynman Lectures on Physics". Feynman also became known through his autobiographical books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?", and books written about him such as "Tuva or Bust!" by Ralph Leighton and the biography "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman" by James Gleick.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman was born on May 11, 1918, in Queens, New York City, to Lucille (; 1895-1981), a homemaker, and Melville Arthur Feynman (1890-1946), a sales manager. Feynman's father was born into a Jewish family in Minsk, Belarus (then part of the Russian Empire) and emigrated with his parents to the United States at the age of five. Feynman's mother was born in the United States into a Jewish family. Lucille's father had emigrated from Poland, and her mother also came from a family of Polish immigrants. She trained as a primary school teacher but married Melville in 1917, before taking up a profession. Feynman was a late talker and did not speak until after his third birthday. As an adult, he spoke with a New York accent strong enough to be perceived as an affectation or exaggeration, so much so that his friends Wolfgang Pauli and Hans Bethe once commented that Feynman spoke like a "bum".


title: Richard Feynman

text: The young Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new. From his mother, he gained the sense of humor that he had throughout his life. As a child, he had a talent for engineering, maintained an experimental laboratory in his home, and delighted in repairing radios. This radio repairing was probably the first job Feynman had, and during this time he showed early signs of an aptitude for his later career in theoretical physics, when he would analyze the issues theoretically and arrive at the solutions. When he was in grade school, he created a home burglar alarm system while his parents were out for the day running errands.


title: Richard Feynman

text: When Richard was five, his mother gave birth to a younger brother, Henry Phillips, who died at age four weeks. Four years later, Richard's sister Joan was born and the family moved to Far Rockaway, Queens. Though separated by nine years, Joan and Richard were close, and they both shared a curiosity about the world. Though their mother thought women lacked the capacity to understand such things, Richard encouraged Joan's interest in astronomy, and Joan eventually became an astrophysicist.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman's parents were both from Jewish families but not religious, and by his youth, Feynman described himself as an "avowed atheist". Many years later, in a letter to Tina Levitan, declining a request for information for her book on Jewish Nobel Prize winners, he stated, "To select, for approbation the peculiar elements that come from some supposedly Jewish heredity is to open the door to all kinds of nonsense on racial theory", adding, "at thirteen I was not only converted to other religious views, but I also stopped believing that the Jewish people are in any way 'the chosen people'". Later in his life, during a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary, he encountered the Talmud for the first time. He saw that it contained the original text in a little square on the page, and surrounding it were commentaries written over time by different people. In this way the Talmud had evolved, and everything that was discussed was carefully recorded. Despite being impressed, Feynman was disappointed with the lack of interest for nature and the outside world expressed by the rabbis, who cared about only those questions which arise from the Talmud.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman attended Far Rockaway High School, which was also attended by fellow Nobel laureates Burton Richter and Baruch Samuel Blumberg. Upon starting high school, Feynman was quickly promoted to a higher math class. An IQ test administered in high school estimated his IQ at 125—high but "merely respectable", according to biographer James Gleick. His sister Joan, who scored one point higher, later jokingly claimed to an interviewer that she was smarter. Years later he declined to join Mensa International, saying that his IQ was too low.


title: Richard Feynman

text: When Feynman was 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral calculus. Before entering college, he was experimenting with mathematical topics such as the half-derivative using his own notation. He created special symbols for logarithm, sine, cosine and tangent functions so they did not look like three variables multiplied together, and for the derivative, to remove the temptation of canceling out the formula_1's in formula_2. A member of the Arista Honor Society, in his last year in high school he won the New York University Math Championship. His habit of direct characterization sometimes rattled more conventional thinkers; for example, one of his questions, when learning feline anatomy, was "Do you have a map of the cat?" (referring to an anatomical chart).


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman applied to Columbia University but was not accepted because of their quota for the number of Jews admitted. Instead, he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he joined the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. Although he originally majored in mathematics, he later switched to electrical engineering, as he considered mathematics to be too abstract. Noticing that he "had gone too far", he then switched to physics, which he claimed was "somewhere in between". As an undergraduate, he published two papers in the "Physical Review". One of these, which was co-written with Manuel Vallarta, was entitled "The Scattering of Cosmic Rays by the Stars of a Galaxy".


title: Richard Feynman

text: The other was his senior thesis, on "Forces in Molecules", based on a topic assigned by John C. Slater, who was sufficiently impressed by the paper to have it published. Today, its main result is known as the Hellmann–Feynman theorem.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1939, Feynman received a bachelor's degree and was named a Putnam Fellow. He attained a perfect score on the graduate school entrance exams to Princeton University in physics—an unprecedented feat—and an outstanding score in mathematics, but did poorly on the history and English portions. The head of the physics department there, Henry D. Smyth, had another concern, writing to Philip M. Morse to ask: "Is Feynman Jewish? We have no definite rule against Jews but have to keep their proportion in our department reasonably small because of the difficulty of placing them." Morse conceded that Feynman was indeed Jewish, but reassured Smyth that Feynman's "physiognomy and manner, however, show no trace of this characteristic".


title: Richard Feynman

text: Attendees at Feynman's first seminar, which was on the classical version of the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory, included Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, and John von Neumann. Pauli made the prescient comment that the theory would be extremely difficult to quantize, and Einstein said that one might try to apply this method to gravity in general relativity, which Sir Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar did much later as the Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity. Feynman received a PhD from Princeton in 1942; his thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler. In his doctoral thesis entitled "The Principle of Least Action in Quantum Mechanics", Feynman applied the principle of stationary action to problems of quantum mechanics, inspired by a desire to quantize the Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory of electrodynamics, and laid the groundwork for the path integral formulation and Feynman diagrams. A key insight was that positrons behaved like electrons moving backwards in time. James Gleick wrote:


title: Richard Feynman

text: One of the conditions of Feynman's scholarship to Princeton was that he could not be married; nevertheless, he continued to see his high school sweetheart, Arline Greenbaum, and was determined to marry her once he had been awarded his PhD despite the knowledge that she was seriously ill with tuberculosis. This was an incurable disease at the time, and she was not expected to live more than two years. On June 29, 1942, they took the ferry to Staten Island, where they were married in the city office. The ceremony was attended by neither family nor friends and was witnessed by a pair of strangers. Feynman could kiss Arline only on the cheek. After the ceremony he took her to Deborah Hospital, where he visited her on weekends.


title: Richard Feynman

text: In 1941, with World War II raging in Europe but the United States not yet at war, Feynman spent the summer working on ballistics problems at the Frankford Arsenal in Pennsylvania. After the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, Feynman was recruited by Robert R. Wilson, who was working on means to produce enriched uranium for use in an atomic bomb, as part of what would become the Manhattan Project. At the time, Feynman had not earned a graduate degree. Wilson's team at Princeton was working on a device called an isotron, intended to electromagnetically separate uranium-235 from uranium-238. This was done in a quite different manner from that used by the calutron that was under development by a team under Wilson's former mentor, Ernest O. Lawrence, at the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California. On paper, the isotron was many times more efficient than the calutron, but Feynman and Paul Olum struggled to determine whether or not it was practical. Ultimately, on Lawrence's recommendation, the isotron project was abandoned.


title: Richard Feynman

text: At this juncture, in early 1943, Robert Oppenheimer was establishing the Los Alamos Laboratory, a secret laboratory on a mesa in New Mexico where atomic bombs would be designed and built. An offer was made to the Princeton team to be redeployed there. "Like a bunch of professional soldiers," Wilson later recalled, "we signed up, en masse, to go to Los Alamos." Like many other young physicists, Feynman soon fell under the spell of the charismatic Oppenheimer, who telephoned Feynman long distance from Chicago to inform him that he had found a Presbyterian sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico for Arline. They were among the first to depart for New Mexico, leaving on a train on March 28, 1943. The railroad supplied Arline with a wheelchair, and Feynman paid extra for a private room for her. There they spent their wedding anniversary.


title: Richard Feynman

text: At Los Alamos, Feynman was assigned to Hans Bethe's Theoretical (T) Division, and impressed Bethe enough to be made a group leader. He and Bethe developed the Bethe–Feynman formula for calculating the yield of a fission bomb, which built upon previous work by Robert Serber. As a junior physicist, he was not central to the project. He administered the computation group of human computers in the theoretical division. With Stanley Frankel and Nicholas Metropolis, he assisted in establishing a system for using IBM punched cards for computation. He invented a new method of computing logarithms that he later used on the Connection Machine. An avid drummer, Feynman figured out how to get the machine to click in musical rhythms.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Other work at Los Alamos included calculating neutron equations for the Los Alamos "Water Boiler", a small nuclear reactor, to measure how close an assembly of fissile material was to criticality.


title: Richard Feynman

text: On completing this work, Feynman was sent to the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Manhattan Project had its uranium enrichment facilities. He aided the engineers there in devising safety procedures for material storage so that criticality accidents could be avoided, especially when enriched uranium came into contact with water, which acted as a neutron moderator. He insisted on giving the rank and file a lecture on nuclear physics so that they would realize the dangers. He explained that while any amount of unenriched uranium could be safely stored, the enriched uranium had to be carefully handled. He developed a series of safety recommendations for the various grades of enrichments. He was told that if the people at Oak Ridge gave him any difficulty with his proposals, he was to inform them that Los Alamos "could not be responsible for their safety otherwise".


title: Richard Feynman

text: Returning to Los Alamos, Feynman was put in charge of the group responsible for the theoretical work and calculations on the proposed uranium hydride bomb, which ultimately proved to be infeasible. He was sought out by physicist Niels Bohr for one-on-one discussions. He later discovered the reason: most of the other physicists were too much in awe of Bohr to argue with him. Feynman had no such inhibitions, vigorously pointing out anything he considered to be flawed in Bohr's thinking. He said he felt as much respect for Bohr as anyone else, but once anyone got him talking about physics, he would become so focused he forgot about social niceties. Perhaps because of this, Bohr never warmed to Feynman.


title: Richard Feynman

text: At Los Alamos, which was isolated for security, Feynman amused himself by investigating the combination locks on the cabinets and desks of physicists. He often found that they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or used easily guessable combinations like dates. He found one cabinet's combination by trying numbers he thought a physicist might use (it proved to be 27–18–28 after the base of natural logarithms, "e" = 2.71828 ...), and found that the three filing cabinets where a colleague kept research notes all had the same combination. He left notes in the cabinets as a prank, spooking his colleague, Frederic de Hoffmann, into thinking a spy had gained access to them.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman's $380 () monthly salary was about half the amount needed for his modest living expenses and Arline's medical bills, and they were forced to dip into her $3,300 () in savings. On weekends he borrowed a car from his friend Klaus Fuchs to drive to Albuquerque to see Arline. Asked who at Los Alamos was most likely to be a spy, Fuchs mentioned Feynman's safe cracking and frequent trips to Albuquerque; Fuchs himself later confessed to spying for the Soviet Union. The FBI would compile a bulky file on Feynman, particularly in view of Feynman's Q clearance.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Informed that Arline was dying, Feynman drove to Albuquerque and sat with her for hours until she died on June 16, 1945. He then immersed himself in work on the project and was present at the Trinity nuclear test. Feynman claimed to be the only person to see the explosion without the very dark glasses or welder's lenses provided, reasoning that it was safe to look through a truck windshield, as it would screen out the harmful ultraviolet radiation. The immense brightness of the explosion made him duck to the truck's floor, where he saw a temporary "purple splotch" afterimage.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman nominally held an appointment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as an assistant professor of physics, but was on unpaid leave during his involvement in the Manhattan Project. In 1945, he received a letter from Dean Mark Ingraham of the College of Letters and Science requesting his return to the university to teach in the coming academic year. His appointment was not extended when he did not commit to returning. In a talk given there several years later, Feynman quipped, "It's great to be back at the only university that ever had the good sense to fire me."


title: Richard Feynman

text: As early as October 30, 1943, Bethe had written to the chairman of the physics department of his university, Cornell, to recommend that Feynman be hired. On February 28, 1944, this was endorsed by Robert Bacher, also from Cornell, and one of the most senior scientists at Los Alamos. This led to an offer being made in August 1944, which Feynman accepted. Oppenheimer had also hoped to recruit Feynman to the University of California, but the head of the physics department, Raymond T. Birge, was reluctant. He made Feynman an offer in May 1945, but Feynman turned it down. Cornell matched its salary offer of $3,900 per annum. Feynman became one of the first of the Los Alamos Laboratory's group leaders to depart, leaving for Ithaca, New York, in October 1945.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Because Feynman was no longer working at the Los Alamos Laboratory, he was no longer exempt from the draft. At his induction physical, Army psychiatrists diagnosed Feynman as suffering from a mental illness and the Army gave him a 4-F exemption on mental grounds. His father died suddenly on October 8, 1946, and Feynman suffered from depression. On October 17, 1946, he wrote a letter to Arline, expressing his deep love and heartbreak. The letter was sealed and only opened after his death. "Please excuse my not mailing this," the letter concluded, "but I don't know your new address." Unable to focus on research problems, Feynman began tackling physics problems, not for utility, but for self-satisfaction. One of these involved analyzing the physics of a twirling, nutating disk as it is moving through the air, inspired by an incident in the cafeteria at Cornell when someone tossed a dinner plate in the air. He read the work of Sir William Rowan Hamilton on quaternions, and tried unsuccessfully to use them to formulate a relativistic theory of electrons. His work during this period, which used equations of rotation to express various spinning speeds, ultimately proved important to his Nobel Prize–winning work, yet because he felt burned out and had turned his attention to less immediately practical problems, he was surprised by the offers of professorships from other renowned universities, including the Institute for Advanced Study, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Feynman was not the only frustrated theoretical physicist in the early post-war years. Quantum electrodynamics suffered from infinite integrals in perturbation theory. These were clear mathematical flaws in the theory, which Feynman and Wheeler had tried, unsuccessfully, to work around. "Theoreticians", noted Murray Gell-Mann, "were in disgrace." In June 1947, leading American physicists met at the Shelter Island Conference. For Feynman, it was his "first big conference with big men ... I had never gone to one like this one in peacetime." The problems plaguing quantum electrodynamics were discussed, but the theoreticians were completely overshadowed by the achievements of the experimentalists, who reported the discovery of the Lamb shift, the measurement of the magnetic moment of the electron, and Robert Marshak's two-meson hypothesis.


title: Richard Feynman

text: Bethe took the lead from the work of Hans Kramers, and derived a renormalized non-relativistic quantum equation for the Lamb shift. The next step was to create a relativistic version. Feynman thought that he could do this, but when he went back to Bethe with his solution, it did not converge. Feynman carefully worked through the problem again, applying the path integral formulation that he had used in his thesis. Like Bethe, he made the integral finite by applying a cut-off term. The result corresponded to Bethe's version. Feynman presented his work to his peers at the Pocono Conference in 1948. It did not go well. Julian Schwinger gave a long presentation of his work in quantum electrodynamics, and Feynman then offered his version, entitled "Alternative Formulation of Quantum Electrodynamics". The unfamiliar Feynman diagrams, used for the first time, puzzled the audience. Feynman failed to get his point across, and Paul Dirac, Edward Teller and Niels Bohr all raised objections.


title: Richard Feynman

text: To Freeman Dyson, one thing at least was clear: Shin'ichirō Tomonaga, Schwinger and Feynman understood what they were talking about even if no one else did, but had not published anything. He was convinced that Feynman's formulation was easier to understand, and ultimately managed to convince Oppenheimer that this was the case. Dyson published a paper in 1949, which added new rules to Feynman's that told how to implement renormalization. Feynman was prompted to publish his ideas in the "Physical Review" in a series of papers over three years. His 1948 papers on "A Relativistic Cut-Off for Classical Electrodynamics" attempted to explain what he had been unable to get across at Pocono. His 1949 paper on "The Theory of Positrons" addressed the Schrödinger equation and Dirac equation, and introduced what is now called the Feynman propagator. Finally, in papers on the "Mathematical Formulation of the Quantum Theory of Electromagnetic Interaction" in 1950 and "An Operator Calculus Having Applications in Quantum Electrodynamics" in 1951, he developed the mathematical basis of his ideas, derived familiar formulae and advanced new ones.


title: Richard Feynman

text: While papers by others initially cited Schwinger, papers citing Feynman and employing Feynman diagrams appeared in 1950, and soon became prevalent. Students learned and used the powerful new tool that Feynman had created. Computer programs were later written to evaluate Feynman diagrams, enabling physicists to use quantum field theory to make high-precision predictions. Marc Kac adapted Feynman's technique of summing over possible histories of a particle to the study of parabolic partial differential equations, yielding what is now known as the Feynman–Kac formula, the use of which extends beyond physics to many applications of stochastic processes. To Schwinger, however, the Feynman diagram was "pedagogy, not physics".