I did really enjoy this detail:
> It was an extremely ugly, long (2 years!) divorce hearing: it made the newspapers because of Bell’s allegations of “extreme cruelty” by Feynman, including the notion that he spent all of his waking hours either doing calculus and playing the bongos.
Brilliant guy... but it is funny to think how nonstop bongos could definitely drive a spouse crazy.
While reading through that I was suspecting it was perhaps a peer that was envious of Feynman, but an ex (scorned?) partner is extremely plausible.
I know this is a common trope in many media portrayals, but it's really not my experience. The "insufferable genius" stereotype tracks most not for the extremely smart people but the kinda-smart people who are absolute jerks but try to defend their jerkassery on the basis of their intelligence.
I've also known a handful of artists, and some seemed to adopt the tortured artist stereotype out of style, not fate. They were convinced no one would take them seriously artistically if they weren't interesting and eccentric. In their case, being a jerk is a fashion.
I guess my point is, we choose what skills we want to develop, and also if we accept the skill exchange, or make excuses like "I'm bad at X", "I am this way and can't change", etc. Leave that to people that are actually diagnosed with a limiting condition; they usually put a great deal of effort and still need help to succeed.
The kind of person that has spent much time chiselling their belief system or is simply fascinated by a field of study that not many people can relate to on that depth. Feynman was a great communicator, but I can think of a few people that may have Asperger's syndrome that have that exceptional insight into things that sometimes results in collateral damage in relationships.
What I mean is there are exceptional people, and sometimes people fail to understand what is exceptional and take exception themselves.
The political narrative of the time obviously was extra cynical about declarations of which team you're playing for, or non-declaration. That's what I meant about non-conformist, they're not interested in the politics.
Autism plays a lot into this. You'll get people who can seem condescending or unaware of different social norms, and it's genuinely not from a bad place, just a complete inability to understand their own communication style (especially in the moment).
Recently "autism" is a scapegoat for everything, both claiming to be autist to get a free pass to be a jerk, or calling someone autist because they do something unexpected.
I have been called autist after a meeting just because I said something could not be done in the timeframe proposed. Acording to social norms, the correct thing to do was to lie, say it could be easily done, and deal with expected missed deadlines with even more lies.
Another "autism" trait I have is to say a dry "no" to invitations I don't want to attend, apparently the social norm is to say "yes" and then fake an excuse a couple of hours ahead, or even worse, just don't go.
The point is the word "autism" (or even jerk) is being used as a synonym of "direct", "sincere" or "no bullshit" too often. And I am not talking about calling people fat or ugly out of the blue (that's a real jerk), but saying "no" when it is enough.
This is the bucket Ayn Rand falls into. Her philosophy is radically different, revolutionizing the entire field, to the point that most people can’t even grasp that the things she questions are open to debate.
No idea about how social systems actually work, or how real humans act.
If there's one thing that was real about Rand it was that ego.
There's few people that can make an ass of themselves to multiple fields so quickly, but if you stuck an artist, an economist, and an anthropologist in the room with Rand, after 15 minutes they could have all left with a laugh on Rands behalf.
It's also so funny to me the modern US libertarians that claim to love her so much. Rand hated libertarians! She thought they were crybabies and had no moral or logical foundation.
Because the FBI interviewer refers to the interviewee with feminine pronouns.
And his other books-- they're just his stories, trying to capture the characteristic style in which he talked, while editing it to be a cohesive written work.
This criticism is maybe valid for QED-- I am not sure what fraction of that he was really involved in-- but not the rest of his body of work. Is this supposed to be bad?
I once worked through part of the first volume of his lectures in the published book while listening to the recordings of him partly out of curiosity to see how much the original lectures as he gave them matched the ones which were compiled and published in written form (which I already knew was something not done by him). I came away feeling impressed one could either stick so closely to some lecture notes when lecturing and/or put together a written work which so closely matched a spoken one without coming across as being a transcript. It’s quite the accomplishment and one which I felt was a credit to everyone involved.
> put together a written work which so closely matched a spoken one without coming across as being a transcript.
Leighton deserves the credit for this. Feynman did share his notes, but Feynman's notes are.. an adventure.. to work through.
It's less axe grinding and more counter-acting an inaccurate narrative.
I think anyone who has read his narratives realizes the dude had some personal flaws.
It's easy to throw muck at someone who is not around to defend.
And you seem to be saying that it is a reasonable thing to do in this particular case.
He was very serious about his physics and wrote that stuff down.
Someone else wrote down his stories. His stories were probably often not entirely accurate, and whomever wrote down his stories also probably had an agenda. So books "by feynman" should be treated with some caution since they're written not by feynman.
His physics and science are obviously not "a sham". It is in fact possible for someone to be great and awful at the same time.
> Among his many accomplishments, he contributed to several key conceptual breakthroughs in quantum physics, and his role in developing the field of quantum electrodynamics led to a Nobel Prize in 1965, which he shared with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga. [...] He came off as a fun, likeable guy who just liked to do math, play pranks, and bang on the bongos.
> These things are true. But it’s also true that throughout his career, Feynman reveled in blatant misogyny and sexism. In “Surely You’re Joking”, Feynman details how he adopted the mindset of a pick-up artist (an outlook he also claims to have eventually abandoned) by treating women as if they were worthless and cruelly lashing out at them when they rejected his advances. He worked and held meetings in strip clubs, and while a professor at Cal Tech, he drew naked portraits of his female students. Even worse, perhaps, he pretended to be an undergraduate student to deceive younger women into sleeping with him.
Mythologizing or overly condemning figures is bad. I think it's one of the worst things we can do. It's both a disservice to everyone who knew them because it can minimize his impact on them and a disservice to the person themselves by inaccurately remembering them and is bad for society because it impedes our ability to learn. Personally I would be quite surprised if a guy at that time wasn't fairly sexist just given how often even as a kid I saw obvious sexism from people who were even a generation younger than him. I read the Feynman Lectures (which are freely available[2]!) as an undergrad and later interned on a couple collider experiments at RHIC and CEBAF where I encountered a lot more of his impact on quantum electro and chromodynamics. He was undeniably massively impactful and a brilliant communicator. I'd recommend everyone studying physics read his lectures and watch some interviews[3] with him.
He was also human and would have had common flaws like anyone else. His books strongly indicate this. I don't think this means he was the devil, but it should be something we think about. I think you can reasonably debate whether or not people in historical contexts should be judged "good" or "bad" based on ethical standards which are more commonly accepted now than they were then, but I can't imagine a good reason to ignore the existence of those flaws or to say they don't matter. People treat Feynman as a role model, but I hope most people can agree that trying to sleep with undergrads when you're a professor is bad and should not be emulated.
[1] https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...
[2] https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/
[3] I particularly like this one, though I feel a bit bad for the interviewer (also his ice melting explanation is probably wrong, but he does couch it with "so they say") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lL-hXO27Q
If his wife did write that memo, I’d say she had pretty good justification.
[0]: https://www.tumblr.com/centrally-unplanned/76851065507251814...
Regarding domestic abuse charges, this was before we had no fault divorce. It was common at that time to make up charges of abuse, often in concert with the lawyers of both parties just to ensure that divorce is granted.
So it is not a clear open and shut case at all.
I don't see her having much incentive to lie and make up these statements, and see no evidence that she did lie. Some women lie about domestic abuse, most don't.
Going by what people say, it was not unusual at all to use false allegations of abuse (or adultery) in divorce proceedings at that time. Sometimes it was the only way.
(I should note that I have never particularly liked or cared about Feynman or any of the 20th century cult-of-personality physicists.)
Who Smeared Richard Feynman? (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418130 - June 2020 (56 comments)
Who smeared Richard Feynman? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024982 - July 2014 (54 comments)