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Comment by acidburnNSA | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure this was always a bit tongue-in-cheek and/or just non-technical salespeople drumming up some hype. Here we are talking about it many decades later. The 1950s reactor designers certainly were not that stupid. In fact, a 1955 textbook on nuclear technology says this in its intro:

"The [statement] that the heat released by the complete fission of one pound of nuclear fuel is equivalent to that obtainable by 1400 tons of coal (or 300,000 gallons of fuel oil), has led to some erroneous conclusions. The fantastic possibility has been envisaged of including in an automobile enough fissionable material, about the size of a pea, to last the life of the vehicle. In order to realize why this is not within the bounds of reality, it is necessary to understand something about the fission process."

Glasstone -- Principles of Nuclear Reactor Engineering (1955) [1]

[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003994194&vi...

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On the other hand, Feynman On Patents is a good overview of why these ideas would be thrown about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gwPB78lk (& well, we did end up with nuclear submarines)

Asimov's fiction had quite a bit of arbitrary nuclear devices

Thank you for sharing this link. Somehow I've never stumbled upon it. I am a big fan of Feynman ( his book were invaluable when I was studying physics in the university )

Feynman never fails to bring a smile to my face, one of few men I regret being too young to meet before they died.

I have suspicion Feynman is a "don't meet your heros" type person - There's Feynman the very great scientist but then there's also Feynman the egotistical misogynistic alleged wife beater.

> there's also Feynman the egotistical misogynistic alleged wife beater

I find it rather unlikely he was a wife beater considering what I've read about the relationship with his ill wife. It seems far more likely this is gossip spread by folks on a mission to slander great men of the past. If you can't provide any actual evidence backing that claim, you should really refrain from spreading such things IMHO.

This might be worth a read:

https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/surely-youre-a-creep-mr-fey...

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...

Page 64.

Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his first year on sabbatical in Brazil.[123][108] He had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. He proposed to her by mail from Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was frightened by his violent temper. Their politics were different; although he registered and voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.[124][125]

Obviously, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but it's not particularly contested that Feynman was a wife-beater to Wife No. 2.

Your comment is completely at odds with the excerpt you pasted?

Nothing in that paragraph even contests that he did physically abuse her....?

Cruelty can come in many forms beyond physical trauma.

I read Gleick's biography, and it says:

"The divorce had a fleeting life in the national press--not because Feynman was a celebrity, but because columnists and cartoonists could not overlook the nature of the extreme cruelty: Prof Plays Bongos, Does Calculus In Bed. "The drums made terrific noise," his wife had testified. And: "He begins working on calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens . . . He did calculus while driving his car, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed at night.""

As far as I can tell they went through that route so they could get a quick divorce and not have to go through a cooling-off period.

Wait what? Do you have a source for this? The only thing approaching misogyny that I'm aware of with Feynman was his playboy phase after his wife's death.

I'm not who you asked but I've heard this story before. Like someone said it could be slander but I'm not sure. Googling it brings up all kinds of articles about the subject. https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/richard-feynman-physica...

https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...

It is alleged here on Page 64.

This is testimony of his ex-wife - take that as you will.

Meeting someone is vastly different than marrying them or living with them.

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