Millions of kids around the world dream of becoming the next Bill Gates, the whiz kid who made good by anticipating the digital future and creating one of the world's most successful companies around it. The Microsoft chairman seems to have transcended the software industry to become a cultural icon that young minds find irresistible.

      But who is a hero to Bill Gates? Who does he look up to?

      In a column that he writes for The New York Times Special Features, Gates has identified individuals he respects and admires, "individuals who achieve something inspirational or who possess extraordinary character." Of these, one name comes up more often than others: the late great Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

      Gates had planned on meeting with Feynman in 1988 but didn't get a chance. Feynman died of cancer in February of that year. "It's an opportunity I'm sorry I missed," wrote Gates in the Times in 1995. "His book, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, is a favorite of mine."

      Feynman was a hero because, as Gates put it, "he was incredibly inspirational. He was an independent thinker and gifted teacher who pushed himself to understand new things. I have enjoyed everything I've read about him and by him. I admired him deeply…"

      In 1964, Feynman gave a series of lectures at Cornell University under the title "The Character of Physical Law." His topics ranged from symmetry , probability and uncertainty in physical laws to techniques by which physicists seek new laws. The lectures were recognized for their extraordinary quality. According to Gates: "I have videotapes of physics lectures Feynman gave at Cornell decades ago. They are the best lectures I've seen on any subject. He shared his enthusiasm and clarity energetically and persuasively."

      During a candid interview with a magazine in September 1997, Gates was asked: "Who would you invite to a dinner party?" Feynman was on the list, along with Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci.

      At the time of his death, Feynman had become everyone's favorite physicist, thanks to the popularity of Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think. With these books, Feynman captured the public imagination as no other physicists before him, with the possible exceptions of Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi.

      The Feynman Lectures on Physics, a set of lectures Feynman gave to undergraduates at Caltech in '62-63, is now a classic. Feynman's fame grew when he was appointed to the Rogers commission in 1986 to investigate the Challenger shuttle explosion. His dramatic demonstration on television, in front of millions of viewers, of the loss of resiliency in O-ring at freezing temperature as a principal cause of the Challenger accident made him a national celebrity. In applauding his performance, the physicist Freeman Dyson said: "The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks a clear question."

      Feynman has even made it into the billboards! When Apple Computer began its "Think Different" series of ads featuring great scientists, artists, humanitarians and the like, the company chose Einstein and Gandhi among its first examples of the uncommon rewards awaiting those who dared to heed the beat of a different drum. "Can Feynman be far behind?" I wondered.

      In November '98, I was driving in San Francisco's Mission District when I suddenly saw that familiar face with the knowing grin inviting commuters to ponder the mysteries of ... what? The photograph showed Feynman wearing the corporate T-shirt of Thinking Machine, a Boston-based company where he had briefly worked as a consultant in 1983. Then, in April '99, Feynman "came" to Silicon Valley where I live. Anyone driving along Highway 101 in the South Bay could "see" Feynman teaching quantum mechanics at the California Institute of Technology, in front of a blackboard on which he had written matrices and differential equations.

      What may have pleased Bill Gates most, however, were the publications of The Feynman Lectures on Computation and Feynman and Computation. The first is a collection of lectures Feynman gave at Caltech from 1983 to 1986 as part of an interdisciplinary course called "Potentialities and Limitations of Computing Machines." The second contains contributions by distinguished computer scientists and physicists who were guest lecturers in Feynman's interdisciplinary course. It also contains reprints of Feynman's prescient articles on the physics of computing: There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom (1959) and Simulating Physics with Computers (1982). Anyone reading these two books will agree that Feynman's insight and ingenuity make his lectures on computation almost as timeless as his physics lectures.

      Gates never met Feynman but it is fascinating to imagine a meeting between the two. Here is the whiz kid transformed into a wide-eyed pupil, marveling at the master's facility with ideas and insights, wondering at the source of that magical genius that's uniquely Feynman's. What does Feynman think of the current state of computing? How does he envision its future? Are any architectural breakthroughs in software imminent? Where is the limit and why?

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