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)

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.

Very touching story.

> 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.

> 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.

You have got to be kidding me. And I thought academia was bad in the 21st century.

Related. Others?

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)

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."

[1] p. 64-65 of FBI file - https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...

Such a sad and brave story, makes me count my blessings.

Didnt he cheat on wife with his PhD students, had numerous flings and flirted with other peoples wives ?

I never knew how to square this with stories about Feynman’s sexual predation. Were these two distinct phases of his life?