"What Do You Care What Other People Think?" by Richard P. Feynman

But it’s also true that throughout his career, Feynman reveled in blatant misogyny and sexism. He came off as a fun, likeable guy who just liked to do math, play pranks, and bang on the bongos. What’s more, in striking contrast to the stereotype of the distant and ultra-serious, all-work-and-no-play scientist, Feynman offered an alluring image of scientific inquiry in his popular physics books for non-scientist readers and humor-laden autobiographies. 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. Part of this process must include a serious reconsideration of how we’ve regarded abusive male scientists in the past-and how we have allowed such figures, in turn, to control the story and direction of science.īy anyone’s definition, Richard Feynman was a highly intelligent man.

Even as several high-profile scientists have lost their jobs due to charges of sexual misconduct over last few years, #MeToo has not much altered the science professions, and it likely won’t until the culture of science is dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.

But if you were to ask the many men who filled my mentions for weeks, my actual intention was to erase every trace of Feynman from the history books and to destroy the memory of a brilliant man who was just as much a victim of his time as the women whom he preyed upon.įeynman, who died in 1988, is only one of the famous male scientists now sparking heated debates over the question of whether it’s possible, or even desirable, to separate the science from the scientist. My initial intention was to critique Nature magazine’s celebratory profile of Feynman’s oeuvre, which made only glancing mention of “disturbingly sexist” sections of his book that revealed “predatory behaviour towards women,” without further explanation of Feynman’s well-documented history of sexual predation. Feynman!” in which he calls women in bars “bitches” for not sleeping with him. To mark the occasion, I sent out a tweet that included a quote from Feynman’s widely beloved memoir, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. This spring, scientists and science writers alike celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize- winning physicist Richard Feynman.

&quot;What Do You Care What Other People Think?&quot; by Richard P. Feynman

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?" by Richard P. Feynman