Small story about the time I read the collection Feynman's letters (I think it's a book called Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track)<p>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.<p>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.<p>FWIW, they had a very cute relationship and the letters are worth reading for that alone.
Very touching story.<p>> PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.<p>Not out of character for how I always imagined his personality.
> Marriage, however, proved to be a towering practical problem — Princeton, where Feynman was now pursuing a Ph.D., threatened to withdraw the fellowships funding his graduate studies if he were to wed, for the university considered the emotional and pragmatic responsibilities of marriage a grave threat to academic discipline.<p>You have got to be kidding me. And I thought academia was bad in the 21st century.
Related. Others?<p><i>Love After Life: Richard Feynman’s Letter to His Departed Wife (2017)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204678">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24204678</a> - Aug 2020 (1 comment)<p><i>Richard Feynman's Extraordinary Letter to His Departed Wife</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280764">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280764</a> - March 2019 (12 comments)<p><i>Feynman's Letter to His Wife</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375283">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10375283</a> - Oct 2015 (60 comments)<p><i>Richard Feynman’s Love Letter to His Wife Sixteen Months After Her Death</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7893757">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7893757</a> - June 2014 (1 comment)
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!"<p>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."<p>[1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - <a href="https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-richard-feynman-1165/#file-4617" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...</a>