Who bought Feynman's diagram-covered van in 2012?

The story behind the answer

Seamus Blackley bought Feynman's diagram-covered van in 2012.

The vehicle was a Dodge Tradesman Maxivan that Richard Feynman and his wife, Gweneth Howarth, bought in 1975. Feynman had the exterior decorated with colorful particle-interaction diagrams, while the interior received the era's distinctive mustard-yellow and avocado-green treatment. Its license plate read “QANTUM,” a playful reference to quantum physics.

After Feynman's death, his family sold the van for one dollar to his friend Ralph Leighton, the writer who helped produce Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Leighton stored it for years, during which the vehicle deteriorated. Blackley, a video-game designer known as one of the creators of the Xbox, located it and acquired it in 2012.

Blackley organized restoration work to preserve the van and restore its faded diagrams. Ralph Leighton is therefore a tempting wrong answer because he owned the vehicle immediately after Feynman's family, but Blackley was the person who bought it in 2012. The van has since become a memorable piece of science and popular-culture history.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026

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