Losing his first wife was a tragedy that seems to have led Feynman down a dark personal path. Everybody likes the funny second wife divorce story - "because he did calculus all the time!"
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."
Plenty of people lose loved ones and manage to remain decent human beings. We can admire Feynman's contributions to physics, but when it comes to personal life, he was just an asshole. There's no point in looking up to him in matters of how to love another human being. Your everyday nobody is far more inspirational in that regard.
>> ...but when it comes to personal life, he was just an asshole
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.
A long time *ago I read re: Feynman's divorce that false accusations of abuse were common back then because no-fault divorce didn't exist. Couples that wanted a divorce would have to concoct a story in order to get a judge to sign off. I don't have strong feelings either way because it's impossible to know what really happened between them, but I found it an interesting counterpoint.
> 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]
The cited book provides very interesting background:
> Admissible grounds varied from state to state. [...] In the other states, the common grounds were adultery, desertion, and cruelty; but there were all sorts of state idiosyncrasies. [...] Cruelty became the grounds of choice in the twentieth century; it overtook adultery in 1922, and in 1950 accounted for almost three-fifths of all divorces. Most states recognized cruelty as a valid reason for divorce—New York was a prominent exception.
> What accounts for this outbreak of marital cruelty? Nothing. It was, in fact, an outbreak of collusion. Most "cruelty" cases were uncontested. The plaintiff (usually the wife) filed for divorce. The husband made no defense. Divorce was granted, by default. Collusive divorce had become common in the late nineteenth century; in the twentieth century, it was absolutely pervasive. In legal theory, a collusive divorce was void. Husband and wife had no right to agree to split. In practice, collusion was the rule, not the exception; and the judges all knew it. Their (implicit) motto was: don't ask, don't tell.
> The precise form of collusion did vary from state to state. It mirrored the state statute; it was, in a sense, "cheating in the shadow of the law". In California, as in most states, cruelty was the courtroom favorite. In case after case after case, the wife complained that her husband cursed her and hit her, and made her life miserable. [...] In 1921 in San Francisco, the wife was plaintiff in 70 percent of divorce cases; and she alleged cruelty in 40 percent of the cases. By 1950 the percentage of accusations of cruelty had reached 70 percent.
> In New York divorce was available, practically speaking, only for adultery. This was an extreme situation; but any and all attempts to amend the law ended in shipwreck in the legislature. The demand for divorce, however, was as strong in New York as it was elsewhere. One end-run around divorce was annulment. Annulment is a declaration that a marriage never was valid, because of some kind of fraud or other impediment; in most states, annulment was a rare beast—usually fewer than 4 percent of all dissolutions of marriage. But New York was an annulment Mecca. By 1950 there were ten counties in New York which granted more annulments than divorces; and for the state as a whole, there were two-thirds as many annulments as decrees of divorce.
> New York also developed a weird form of collusive adultery—one might even call it soft-core adultery. A man would check into a hotel, a woman (usually a blonde) would appear, together with a photographer; the photographer would take pictures of the couple, in pajamas or underwear or even naked; the woman would get her fifty-dollar fee, and lo and behold! here was evidence of adultery. The flavor of this charade is neatly captured in the title of a magazine article from 1934: "I Was the Unknown Blonde in 100 New York Divorces".
Taking the above at face value, we have strong evidence that lots of people went to major lengths to establish a legal pretext for divorce. Cruelty allegations going from 40% to 70% in one city, and apparently making similar changes elsewhere, is certainly very suspicious—does it seem likely that husbands' behavior actually changed in that way? Allegation statistics varying significantly from state to state would also be rather suspicious; the book alludes to that but doesn't give details. The cited book itself has citations for several of the numbers and the magazine article, which one could chase down if one wants more detail and confirmation.
No fault divorce did not exist before the rise in cruelty claims. What caused the sudden rise in cruelty claims? None of these sources contain any sort of analysis, they're just a narrative with number aids.
The crime and violence wave of the century was beginning, which would end with a whisper in the 1990s as crime and violence dropped everywhere in the US regardless of enacted laws.
Women's rights were taking hold. Men's behavior didn't necessarily change - the social ability to escape that behavior did.
I don't think that social sciences are as technically advanced as you want them to be. They are in their infancy.
I tend to agree with "where there's smoke, there's fire," but I'm also cautious reading too much into what a single person -- in particular, an ex-lover -- has to say when forming an opinion about someone. Obviously if it's a pattern, that's another story. But I've lived through some things, and witnessed people make claims that were stronger than what was justified.
I once told my partner that there was a musician he listened to that really relished putting women down. He thought I was talking about one song, but I didn't remember enough to give details. A few weeks later, he comes back - "It's not just one song!"
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.
I’d say having some experience in the area that extreme grief can really affect someone in profound ways.
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.
Feynman clearly did not lead an exemplary personal life but his second wife also accused him of being a communist so I'd take her testimony with a grain of salt.
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...