The beginning of the book contained a lot of cute letters between him and his wife Arline. I was curious how much of the book would be this, considering I know she died of TB, so I flipped ahead and saw a letter to her quite a few more pages in, so I figured she must survive until at least that point. I continued reading and was emotionally caught off guard when she died only a couple of pages later. I'm not sure why I was so distraught at the death of someone I did not know who died 80 years ago, but I was looking forward to, and had the expectation of, a few more cute letters between them.
When I got to the letter that I had originally flipped to, it was the one he was writing after her death as a form of therapy to himself.
FWIW, they had a very cute relationship and the letters are worth reading for that alone.
> PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.
Not out of character for how I always imagined his personality.
You have got to be kidding me. And I thought academia was bad in the 21st century.
Love After Life: Richard Feynman’s Letter to His Departed Wife (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204678 - Aug 2020 (1 comment)
Richard Feynman's Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280764 - March 2019 (12 comments)
Feynman's Letter to His Wife - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375283 - Oct 2015 (60 comments)
Richard Feynman’s Love Letter to His Wife Sixteen Months After Her Death - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7893757 - June 2014 (1 comment)
His second wife testified in court that he flew into a rage and choked her if she unwittingly interrupted his calculus. [1] She was granted a divorce due to his "extreme cruelty."
[1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...
I don't know about you, but physical abuse (e.g. choking his spouse if she interrupted him while he worked) goes way beyond asshole territory IMHO. We're talking about someone who was essentially an incredibly cruel, if not monstrous person.
But what generally happens with these types of things is that history tends to treat famous men very kindly and overlook or even completely erase their dark sides. That is indeed what has happened with Feynman.
> In many other states, especially California, the most popular allegation for divorce was cruelty (which was then unavailable in New York). For example, in 1950, wives pleaded "cruelty" as the basis for 70 percent of San Francisco divorce cases.[41] Wives would regularly testify to the same facts: their husbands swore at them, hit them, and generally treated them terribly.[41] This procedure was described by Supreme Court of California Associate Justice Stanley Mosk:
> > Every day, in every superior court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the "innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel."[42]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce#Bypassing_the...
He never noticed until he had the right frame of reference. It was easy to gloss over each individual instance because the songs weren't referring to him. He experienced an entirely different reality based on his perspective of existence.
There are ugly patterns in Feynman's writings about women. Not everyone has the luxury of ignoring these patterns as they read his work.
Not making excuses for someone whom I don’t know or understand, but the toxic soup and paranoia associated with where and the nature of his work combined with what seems to a hard loss is a recipe for the type of mental anguish that might explain some of those behaviors.
If the love of my life were to be cut down in the prime of her life, I imagine I'd be emotionally scarred for life. Sure, I'd make every effort to move on, but I just can't imagine the amount of emotional scar tissue that would remain permanently.
https://cirosantilli.com/feynman-was-a-huge-womanizer-during...
A cursory Google reveals...
> Neither were Feynman's escapades limited to bars; more than one of his biographies have documented affairs with two married women, at least one of which caused him considerable problems.[0]
Charlie Munger seems to be a source for claims that he would sleep with the wives of his undergrad students[2].
And then there are these passages[1], which appear to be from his own autobiography. This isn't necessarily cheating, but assuming that what he's written is true, they serve to make the accusations of infidelity more plausible.
> "... You must disrespect the girls. Furthermore, the very first rule is, don’t buy a girl anything –– not even a package of cigarettes — until you’ve asked her if she’ll sleep with you, and you’re convinced that she will, and that she’s not lying.”
>I adopted the attitude that those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything, and all they’re in there for is to get you to buy them a drink, and they’re not going to give you a goddamn thing; I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches, and so on. I learned it till it was automatic.
>I think to myself, “Typical bitch: he’s buying her drinks, and she’s inviting somebody else to the table.”
>I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE! ... You got me to buy these sandwiches, and what am I going to get for it? Nothing!”
This Baffler[3] piece also focuses on this subject...
>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. His second wife accused him of abuse, citing multiple occasions when he’d fly into a blind rage if she interrupted him while he was working or playing his bongos.
[0]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunctio...
[1]https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...
[2]https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/richard-feynman-a-woma...
[3]https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...
Regardless, this behavior was clearly inappropriate and should not be tolerated at a university. It does not appear to be actually criminal or predatory, unless I am still missing something.
> But no matter how effective the lesson was, I never really used it after that. I didn’t enjoy doing it that way. But it was interesting to know that things worked much differently from how I was brought up.
Instead of learning to play the bongos he dropped a series of EP's detailing how he really felt about the opposite sex.
We'll never know what we missed in this timeline, the Tom Lehrer of gangstah rap was never born in our universe.
It's funny how we like to think we're not animals when we really are.
Feynman has been a huge influence on me. His outlook on science and the world helped shape my own. But we can’t ignore the flaws of our heroes, and it really sounds like he had a dark side.
People do good and evil things. But a person, in virtually all cases, is not "good" or "evil". Even if Feynman was engaging in the two behaviors you are thinking of at the same time (whatever those behaviors are - I'm not commenting), it still doesn't make him some kind of paradox. It does so much damage to think like this. This false dichotomy is especially prevalent for sexual topics, because they trigger stronger emotions and push us towards our "that guy good, that guy bad" instincts.
So Woody Allen went from being an adored auteur to someone who not only was declared guilty of a horrible crime in public opinion, but also people felt entitled to declare his cinema was never good to begin with (where were these people before Allen fell in disgrace? Nowhere. They only declared his movies trash once he fell in disgrace).
Same with Feynman. Same with Asimov. Same with Picasso. And the list goes on forever.
People cannot bear the thought that artists, scientists and public figures in general are real people, with flaws and all.
Possibly related to the Fundamental Attribution Error in psychology:
"The fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or over-attribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional or personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations."
https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.htm...
To enjoy entertainment of anyone not a saint makes you a bad person. And I want to state emphatically for the record I am a good person. I believe in all the right things, and disbelieve all the wrong ones. When those things change next year or tomorrow, I too will change and forget that I ever believed otherwise.
Feynman was a notable scientist but he was also one of the most famous scientists, he was a great populizer of science especially later in life. Finding out he was a sex pest or womanizer or worse has tangible consequences to that role. Was he a good mentor in general, or only to women he wanted to fuck? Or only ones he didn't? Were there any women pushed out of science because of his inappropriate attention or advances? We now have to ask these questions, and their answers can retroactively change how we evaluate his later life's work as an advocate of science.
Similarly woody allen makes movies that are compelling because of their portrayal of human connection and vulnerability. As you said, what woody allen is accused of is a great crime, far far beyond routine human flaws. It does change the context and the meaning of the movie to know that this is what its creator thinks of human connection as well. You can decide not to believe the allegations, but for people who do believe them I don't think it's an error or transgression for them to evaluate his movies in light of them.
And it is certainly not true that no one criticized these figures before their "faults" were known. Orson Welles famously with woody allen, Picasso was not always revered, and I disliked feynman from reading his own memoirs. It's just these criticisms are not generally welcomed or amplified for figures in the prime of their accolades. Which is an interesting subject itself, I think.
If you're going to argue for a gradient of perspective while assessing the character of a person there are better examples than Feynman.
The degree of the subject's immorality has no bearing on my point. In fact, it's arguably better to use a "worse" example, by your definition, since it actually challenges the reader to consider the point more carefully. If the subject's crimes are petty, the reader might accidentally ignore my point, instead just jumping to the easy and fallacious thought, "yeah I agree, that person didn't do anything terrible", and moving on.
That said, to be clear, I don't have an opinion on where Feynman's indiscretions fall on the spectrum. I don't know the details beyond womanizing/objectifying/going after women in relationships. Again, I'd make the same comment regardless of the answer.
But people will keep lopsidedly downvoting when someone veers towards the judgement-side. As if putting people on pedestals is any better.
To further clarify, note this sentence in my comment:
>it still doesn't make him some kind of paradox
I did not say, e.g.
>it still doesn't make him, on par, more bad than good
> sexual predation
I don't think this term is appropriate for anyone who is less than an attempted rapist.
There are many existing words to describe Feynman's behavior. Pervert, philanderer womanizer, consummate cheater.... Let's use existing words that lead to the correct assumptions by those unfamiliar with his sexual behaviors.
A sexual predator evokes Harvey Weinstein. AFAIK, Feynman sounds more like an 80s rock-star, and all the positive + negative behaviors associated with that stereotype.
I still think Harvey Weinstein is worse, like you say, but I think it's disingenuous to pretend like they're completely different types of people.
Those are completely different types of people. It is not that professors should sleep with students, it is that Weinstein went far far beyond that. Suggesting it is the same is minimizing what Weinstein did.
It certainly doesn’t excuse any behavior of his, but perhaps it explains it.
I'm having a hard time imagining how the cause you posited could conceivably lead to the effect in question. Let's also remember that when a guy "plays the field", it doesn't always have a deep story behind it! :)
I have zero evidence to back this up, it’s just how I felt after reading his books, and the biography by Gleick.
Feynman was a successful, charismatic man with insatiable curiosities about many things. He may have caused women to do things they later regretted, but it's unlikely he forced anyone against their will.
The rumors and stories from himself suggest he was very successful at dating a lot of women, who were all consensual adults. Are you talking about something else?
Our puritanical culture just doesn't like it.
> those bar girls are all bitches, that they aren’t worth anything
> I’m not going to be a gentleman to such worthless bitches
> I think to myself, “Typical bitch"
> I stop suddenly and I say to her, “You… are worse than a WHORE!"
Ya, it's just our puritanical culture...
The funniest was probably Marilyn Manson. These women really didn't know that he was a disgusting pervert just from seeing him, then dated him for years, complaining a decade later? Manson is an awful person and makes no attempts to hide it. No one could say to the accusers, "you really had no idea this guy was a horrible person from second one?"
If Manson can be attacked and canceled any man can be.
This is a false premise and an oversimplification motivated by (understandably) bitter emotions (I go into this more in another comment).
We are simultaneously told that women are equal to men, and yet we also are told there are male predators and womanizers who women need special protection against.
This dismisses women's sexual agency. Specifically that women may choose, consciously, to exploit their sexual attractiveness to get something from a man.
If women don't have agency, i.e. men can manipulate them into damaging sexual relationships which they are helpless to avoid, this posits women as less than equals to men, as men are expected to stand up for themselves when someone attempts to manipulate them.
