Physicist Melissa Franklin would love to have a dream dinner with Samuel Beckett or Richard Feynman, but she’s afraid she’d get nervous and make a fool of herself.

Question: If you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be?

Melissa Franklin: So, here’s a problem, I just have to tell you right now. Whenever I meet somebody who I really like, I mean who I really admire, I’m a complete idiot at dinner. So, I mean, a complete idiot. So, in a way I would not ever like to go to dinner with anyone. But I have to say that when Samuel Beckett died, I felt like, are you kidding. I was supposed to become your friend, how could you die without that happening. I mean it was just an unspoken idea I had had my whole life that I would meet Samuel Beckett and he would like me and we would become friends. So, but of course, if I did meet him, I’d act like a complete idiot. And I was supposed to meet Feynman, but luckily I didn’t because then I – I don’t have that – you know how people say that pain you can’t remember but embarrassment you can? So, I’m really glad I didn’t meet Feynman because imagine meeting Feynman and then having nothing but love at all energy scales for him and then be an idiot and then remembering that your whole life. So, yeah, I don’t really want to meet these guys at all. But I think I would be less embarrassed by Beckett than Feynman.

October 21, 2009