Talk:Richard Feynman

Template:Nanotech selected

Purely apocryphal story from my grandfather

My grandfather grew up in Far Rockaway and his parents and Feynman's would often play bridge. My Grandfather was much younger than Feynman, but Feynman liked kids and would keep him entertained when they crossed paths. The story goes that during the war, not knowing better, and being in his early teens, my Grandfather asked Feynman what the army had him off doing (it was supposedly common knowledge at the time that he was doing something important and secret). Feynman said he was "building a better peashooter." I guess technically true if you know how the physics package in Little Boy worked... Can't add this to the article because of Wikipedia's rules about primary sources, but I thought this story deserved to be up on the interwebs somewhere. PS, I'm a physicist, but my Grandfather became a lawyer. Quodfui (talk) 23:48, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Nice story, thanks.Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:16, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Feynman = Genius?

There is a bit of accuracy disrupte on the Education section, a user, Vsmith insists that the quote on Feynman being a genius does not require specification. It is unknown if it represents a speculative point of view by removing the line "Some praised Richard Feynman as genius:". The quote there is ambiguous if it represents an objective point of view (is he so much a genius that we add a quote there?) or a speculative point of view (does some praised him that it is notable to be quoted?). By removing the line, "he is praised as.." accuracy is disrupted, thanks. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 18:54, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Simply, "some" be weasely. The quote is from a biography and the title kinda says it. Are there ref'd opinions disputing his status. And it seems the article doesn't call him a genius. Vsmith (talk) 19:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Some is weasely? WP:SOFIXIT.

And it seems the article doesn't call him a genius.

I think you just slipped your tongue that what I said about ambiguity is correct. --14.198.220.253 (talk) 19:13, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Feynman would never have called himself a genius. Just some guy who was interested in stuff and just loved solving problems. At most he would admit he had fun doing so an maybe helped discover a bit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.254.222 (talk) 09:44, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Not that I really care, by Freeman Dyson did call him a genius in a tv interview.137.111.13.200 (talk) 00:37, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Feynman as Atheist

I was surprised to see no mention of his atheism. That did come up in his book "surely you're joking" at least. If I have time I might add it, but I was wondering if there was a reason it's not there Nerfer (talk) 15:38, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Oops, never mind. I had misspelled it as athiest and no matches were found... Nerfer (talk) 17:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Feynman views on women

Worth noting or no? Here are sources: http://tech.mit.edu/V119/N10/col10lipman.10c.html, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2014/07/11/richard-feynman-sexism-and-changing-perceptions-of-a-scientific-icon/, http://www.livescience.com/20974-feynman-physicist-fbi.html Maranjosie (talk) 20:03, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

As the Scientific American blog you cites notes, it is probably a mistake to cherry-pick incidents from Feynman's life to 'prove' one thing or another about his character, and there is actually little in his apparent attitude to women that marks him out as in any way atypical for a man of his generation. He was a man of his time, and behaved accordingly - though perhaps he was a little more honest about it than many. If this needs discussing at all, it needs to be done in a way that avoids judging him by standards to which it is entirely inappropriate to expect him to have ascribed to. AndyTheGrump (talk) 20:20, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

You could say the same about Rolf Harris. It's true that many things Feynman said and did in the 1950s and 1960s did not spark outrage at the time, but like John Kennedy, Feynman's attitudes towards women were noted as very bad by contemporaries even then. Of course, when the 1970s rolled around, it came back to really haunt him. This should be noted in the article, which is hardly neutral at the moment without it, and I think I can do so without holding him to anachronistic standards. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't think he "held views on women" - these are just examples of the way he behaved towards a few of them. Zambelo; talk 22:26, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Researching Feynman is like taking a trip down a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat. That's why he's the last of the Manhattan Project scientists to get the Hawkeye7 makeover. I was hoping against hope that someone else would fix up the article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:49, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

The sources don't support the inclusion of such a section, and as has been pointed out the Scientific American article itself describes how anecdotes are often cherry-picked to push a viewpoint. I doubt anyone is really qualified to discuss Feynman's views on women, only the way he behaved in various circumstances. This thing smells like someone has an axe to grind, whether the sewer is real of not.137.111.13.200 (talk) 00:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It it disagrees...

RF has so many amazing quotations, and there are so few of them in this article. My favorite, found at 3:01 in Richard Feynman Biography,

If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. In that simple statement, is the key to science. It doesn't make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is—If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong. Thats all there is to it.

— Richard Feynman, Cornell University, 1964

I think this quotation deserves inclusion in his article. -Kyle^(talk) 04:50, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

It's on WikiQuote. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:13, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

New external link

Hi, I seek advice and guidance. I'm involved in the development of a very well visited non-commercial "hobby-site", 'Richard Feynman' at http://www.richard-feynman.net/ (currently, 389,810 page hits). I'm quite proud of this site, and I think that it is at least as deserving of a place in the 'External links' as the only current item (which claims to be an "official site", but clearly isn't). However, I suspect that if I try to add the link, the wrath of Wikipedians will again descend upon me. Can I ask others to look at the site and decide whether it's worthy of inclusion?