[HN Gopher] Joan Feynman has died
___________________________________________________________________
Joan Feynman has died
Author : basementcat
Score : 636 points
Date : 2020-08-12 08:20 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aps.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aps.org)
| tuyguntn wrote:
| Is there any reading related to how their parents raise them with
| such a passion to science? (I believe geniuses can be raised)
| abecedarius wrote:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/genius.pdf -- not that I've
| read it myself. There's a book review somewhere on the same
| site.
| microtherion wrote:
| It's an interesting counterpoint to some of Feynman's stories
| about himself.
|
| One rather persistent theme was that he had pretty messed up
| ways of interacting with women, so the discussion here how he
| mentored his sister are a welcome further layer of nuance on
| that point.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >I believe geniuses can be raised
|
| I believe the opposite. Nature vs nurture thing...
|
| Not saying that encouragement, environment etc. does not play a
| role, it does.
| EthanHeilman wrote:
| What about the third opinion timing and luck.
|
| You are exposed to the right sets of ideas at the right time
| and your brain through random chance happens to take a
| particularly fruitful paths to explore the ideas creating an
| exceptionally useful mental model. You have emotional
| preconditions that cause you to process this success in a
| helpful rather than a harmful way. This feeling of success
| and excitement causes you to spend more time daydreaming
| about the subject, slowing building a reservoir of powerful
| and useful mental patterns. Someone can daydream 10-16 hours
| a day for 14 years, but it is very hard to find someone that
| can study a subject they don't like for 8 hours a day for 5
| years straight. I would argue that studying a subject is less
| likely to result in new ideas than day dreaming.
|
| Due to having an environment to grow these ideas, not being
| run over by a car, having the money to pursue schooling, and
| exploring a field which is undergoing a revolution at the
| time you could up 'a genius'. Would anyone outside of
| Academic Physics know Feynman's name, if he entered Physics
| in 1995 when much of the low hanging fruit had already been
| harvested?
|
| One could argue that Grothendieck is a counter example to
| this argument because he grew up in very harsh conditions
| that for the most part actively suppressed his learning.
| However I would claim Grothendieck for the luck and timing
| argument for four reasons:
|
| First the trivial argument, if Grothendieck had starved to
| death while hiding from the Nazis as a child no one would
| name him as a genius.
|
| Second, when he started college he was doing very poorly and
| he almost gave up, but he had mentors and an early success
| that enabled his later successes. What if he had gotten a
| cold that stopped him from that early success. It seems
| likely that given different friendships in college he would
| have dropped out and never been heard from.
|
| Third, he was very interested in political movements and
| dedicated much of his life to it. However, he was not
| particular good at this. If he had an early success in a
| political tract he wrote, it likely would have led him into
| an area that he would not have succeeded in as much as
| Mathematics.
|
| Fourth, French Mathematics at the time was undergoing a
| revolution because so many of the older Mathematicians had
| died in WW1 and WW2. This created opportunities for younger
| Mathematicians to rapidly advance their careers and these
| younger Mathematicans were critical to Grothendieck not being
| sidelined.
| efdee wrote:
| Not everyone has the same potential, but a lot of potential
| goes to waste because it is not encouraged.
| Quai wrote:
| If you dont mind listening to Richard himself, you can watch
| this pre-historic 4:3 videos on youtube;
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga_7j72CVlc
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjm8JeDKvdc
| Quai wrote:
| Or maybe more fitting for this thread, listen to Joan
| herself; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivxkd98mDvc
| Sharlin wrote:
| Uh, their mother specifically told young Joan that women can't
| become scientists because their brains can't handle science the
| way men's can...
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Yes, and look at how her father treated her. Completely
| different.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Apparently, the way to raise a genius is to tell them their
| brains aren't capable of doing science since they don't have a
| Y chromosome.
| sohkamyung wrote:
| For more on Joan Feynman, read this extract about her from the
| book, "A Passion For Science: Tales of Discovery and Invention".
| I especially liked this part:
|
| > [A] thought crossed her mind. "Richard is pretty smart, and if
| I tell him about an interesting problem, he'll find the answer
| before I do and take all the fun out of it for me." So Joan
| decided to strike a deal with him. "I said, Look, I don't want us
| to compete, so let's divide up physics between us. I'll take
| auroras and you take the rest of the Universe. And he said OK!"
|
| [1] https://findingada.com/shop/a-passion-for-science-stories-
| of...
| ascar wrote:
| Amazing read. Thank you! Inspiring how her brother encouraged
| her into sciences after she got completely crushed by her
| mother.
|
| From the same extract:
|
| \begin{quote}
|
| "Women can't do science, because their brains aren't made for
| it," Lucille Feynman declared to her eight-year-old daughter
| Joan. The news was a huge blow to the little girl's ambitions
| which, at the time in 1935, were firmly set on following her
| brother Richard into a life scientific. "I remember sitting in
| a chair and weeping," she recalls.
|
| [...]
|
| The path of Joan's life would be changed significantly one
| night when Richard woke her up and told her to get dressed and
| follow him out into the street. He took her away from the house
| and the street lights and out onto a wide open golf course
| nearby with a big dark sky above them. "I can still remember in
| my mind's eye the green lights dancing in the sky", Joan
| recalls of the flickering northern lights Richard had lead her
| outside to witness. "He told me that it was an aurora and no
| one knew what caused it exactly."
|
| In that moment, she was hooked. And whilst the doubts about a
| woman's abilities to undertake a career in science, planted in
| her by Lucille, remained, Joan's interest in science continued
| to be fuelled by Richard's progress through university. Before
| he'd left home, her brother had made a deal with her that
| whilst away at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
| studying for his bachelor's degree, he would answer any science
| question that she sent him.
|
| "For quite a while we had a notebook which went back and forth,
| and he sent me a problem in maths and I sent the answer,"
| remembers Joan of that time. Then for her fourteenth birthday,
| he gave her the book 'Astronomy' by Robert Horace Baker. "It
| was a book people studied at college," she remembers. "And he'd
| pasted my name in it. I was so excited."
|
| Somewhat daunted by the advanced level of the book, Joan wrote
| to Richard to ask how she should read it. He replied that she
| should start at the beginning and read until she didn't
| understand, and then start at the beginning again. And each
| time she'd get a little further.
|
| "So I did," says Joan, "and I got a little further each time.
| And then one day there was a figure in the book of a spectrum
| and underneath it said 'the relative strengths of the Mg+
| absorption line at 4,481 angstroms... of Stellar Atmospheres
| from the work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin'." The caption was a
| revelation to Joan. Cecilia was a woman's name, and the
| hyphenated family name indicated she was married. It was proof
| that a married woman was capable of doing science.
|
| \end{quote}
|
| I also find this little excerpt about how she encouraged
| scientific thinking in her children inspiring:
|
| > [...] Joan was determined to instil a sense of curiosity and
| wonder in her own children.
|
| > Her son Charles remembers one occasion when, at the age of
| about six, he asked her about her job as a scientist. In
| response Joan handed him a spoon. "Drop it on the table," she
| said. Charles let it fall. "Why did it fall? Why didn't it
| float up to the ceiling?" asked Joan. It had never occurred to
| Charles that there was a whyinvolved. "Because of gravity," she
| continued. "A spoon will always fall, a hot-air balloon will
| always rise." Charles dropped the spoon again and again until
| she made him stop. The boy had no idea what gravity was, but
| the idea of "why?" kept rattling around in his head.
| tima101 wrote:
| > Richard woke her up and told her to get dressed and follow
| him out into the street.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb6vDACwxWU
|
| Longer version:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD_XAX--Ono
| munificent wrote:
| _> And then one day there was a figure in the book of a
| spectrum and underneath it said 'the relative strengths of
| the Mg+ absorption line at 4,481 angstroms... of Stellar
| Atmospheres from the work of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin'." The
| caption was a revelation to Joan. Cecilia was a woman's name,
| and the hyphenated family name indicated she was married. It
| was proof that a married woman was capable of doing science._
|
| This is a great example of what people mean when they say
| "representation matters". Humans benefit greatly from
| existence proofs that people similar themselves are capable
| of doing X.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Is that true in general or only when people have been lied
| to by their mothers in a demonstrably erroneous way?
|
| People often say that others, usually children, require
| physical similarity (sex, skin colour) to be inspired. This
| I find very sad and highly contradictory to my own
| schooling.
|
| I mean all people are broadly similar. Cecilia Payne-
| Gaposchkin has been inspirational to me too, but we have
| little in common physically or socially.
|
| Of course if a I'm wrong people should be up in arms about
| primary schools not having teachers representative of the
| broader population - success can be predicted at that point
| with a high degree of certainty, I gather.
| telesilla wrote:
| We don't know for sure so does it hurt to make the world
| a little more representational? I would doubt it has any
| harm, unlike the alternative.
|
| Yes, teachers talk a lot about the lack of diversity too.
| If you spend a little time with some of them you'll find
| out. The teachers I know around the world genuinely want
| the best for their kids.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| It certainly wasn't true for me. I'm a westerner who
| spent my childhood in undeveloped parts of southeast
| asia. If I didn't learn to apply the all-asian-cast
| stories I heard and read to my own life, I'm sure I would
| have felt very put out. But, that never happened (and
| never even crossed my mind as a problem to have) because
| both my parents always emphasized the universality of the
| human experience.
| throwaw4y-plate wrote:
| >Charles dropped the spoon again and again until she made him
| stop
|
| Kids are natural scientists, heh.
| solarengineer wrote:
| I repeated this spoon drop experiment just now and thought
| about it a bit. I'm astounded by the concept of gravity, and
| even more so that it "weakens" as we move away from the Earth
| took we get to zero gravity. I've got thinking about whether
| I'd get captured by the Sun's gravity - after all the Earth
| is hurtling around the Sun - until another planet were to
| come by, or by chance miss getting caught in any planet's
| gravity and drop out of the Solar system altogether. I also
| just wondered what causes gravity, whether it is possible to
| determine and conclude that there must be no gravity at a
| particular point away from the Earth - all while being seated
| at my chair.
|
| Sorry, this isn't directly related to the overall discussion
| but I got so excited by my thoughts that I wanted to share.
| greyhair wrote:
| And the wild part is, it never actually gets completely to
| zero, though it gets really close! And then read about
| lagrangian points.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
|
| So much fun.
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| There's a relevant quote from the book Anathem about that,
| but can't find it. Something about sequestering a bunch of
| monk-scientists with no particle accelerators or other
| tools, but they still figure out the nature of ultimate
| reality...
| darkwater wrote:
| About this
|
| > I also find this little excerpt about how she encouraged
| scientific thinking in her children inspiring:
|
| I have an almost 5yo daughter that since she was barely 2
| started asked "why?" about almost anything. I promised myself
| that I would never leave a question unanswered, to not
| hinder/limit her natural curiosity. Let's see how this will
| turn out!
| rcollyer wrote:
| My eldest in some ways skipped the "why" stage. "How" was a
| much more important question to him. Although, he did ask
| his mother once why the sun was on fire, but she passed him
| off to me on. Because his questions were often complex, and
| outside of my expertise, I would often say, "I don't know",
| usually followed by, "we can look it up, though".
| sukilot wrote:
| One of the key lessons of physical science is that "why"
| is the same as "how". "Why" is a psychological layer, how
| we thinking about "how". There is no "why" in physics.
| tobrien6 wrote:
| That's quite true in physical science. However, physical
| science is a fairly new endeavor. The "why" may not be
| entirely psychological, but mathematical, at the end of
| the day.
| kkylin wrote:
| Ditto! I also try to never tell the kids "don't ask that
| question." Though very often I do need to answer with "I
| don't know, but let's find out if anyone does," then
| research it later. And occasionally, as recently happened
| when the question was about the Vietnam war: "that is a
| very long and complicated story, give me some time to
| figure out a way to explain a little bit of it."
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Thanks for doing this. The world will thank you now and
| later. And I'd bet she will turn out to be an amazing
| person.
| sukilot wrote:
| I bet she already is.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I'd had the pleasure of answering kids in the 'why' stage
| before having kids of my own. And resolved to face my own
| kids with answers whenever I could.
|
| I'm not sure it has been successful, they never really
| exhausted my ability to answer but I fear it may have
| sucked out some of the magic - not having answers might be
| 'better' to some extent if your aim is to foster curiosity
| and personal goal fulfillment.
|
| My kids are awesome and definitely have some intrigue; but
| perhaps endeavour to not provide answers!
| rickdangerous1 wrote:
| Have you seen the Louis CK bit about that? The relevant bit
| starts about 7 minutes in.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR8Um_vZ3oM
| silviot wrote:
| I thought you were linking this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp9atyHwQF8
|
| Both bits are quite nice.
| marai2 wrote:
| For my own son at a certain point I stumbled upon the
| strategy of not providing him with real answers (most
| probably because I myself didn't know the answers) but
| instead sharing in his curiosity with him and saying things
| like "wow that's interesting, I've never thought about
| that. Maybe this happens because of X, or Y. Do you think
| it could be because of Z?" Like Joan quoted above - at some
| point in their age providing answers takes the fun out of
| things for them. Or rather closes their curiosity and
| inclination to further think about the question. I feel now
| my job is to encourage them to not limit themselves and
| develop more independence in thinking about things
| themselves.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The crucial difference is whether _you_ try to answer all
| questions, or whether you discuss and reason about possible
| answers together.
| darkwater wrote:
| This was not easy (reason with a 2-3yo) but it's starting
| to become easier as time passes by.
| randomsearch wrote:
| This is a common trait, I was the same, I call kids like
| this "why birds" after a BBC character.
| aneutron wrote:
| Upon reading "Surely you must be joking Mr. Feynman !" and "What
| do you care what other people think ?", I have become somewhat of
| a fan of Mr. Richard Feynman. (Despite it being against his idea
| about idolizing people).
|
| But throughout the two books, his relationship with his sister,
| Joan Feynman, was an extremely intriguing once. They were both
| brilliant, and they both encouraged each other.
|
| I got the impression that he, being the person to refuse
| authority and conforming with the pre-established, always came
| back to his sister for an opinion on how to handle "mere humans".
| And it showed in the second part of his story about the
| Challenger investigation.
|
| May she rest in piece.
| xutopia wrote:
| Rest in *peace.
| aneutron wrote:
| Unfortunately, very embarrassing mistake that's there forever
| now.
| mmhsieh wrote:
| no need for embarrassment for you.
|
| radical idea here: the point of language is for a person to
| put the ideas from his head into the head of another
| person. so long as the idea is conveyed, it is successful.
| piece/peace distinction in spelling only matters when there
| is a real risk of ambiguity in intended meaning. everyone
| new what you meant -- so it was OK!
| rytill wrote:
| > everyone *knew what you meant
|
| Couldn't help myself.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Not radical at all. It goes back at least to the early
| 1900's. Big newspaper owners like Colonel McCormick
| wanted to convey meaning by using fewer letters, thus
| saving on ink and paper costs.
|
| They invented alternate spellings to suit their purposes.
| Most died out, but a few have stuck with us, like using
| "thru" for "through."
| mmhsieh wrote:
| i am not sure if this is true but george lucas supposedly
| named episode VI return of the jedi instead of revenge of
| the jedi to save on ink costs. i am almost completely
| sure it is not true but i have not yet seen a debunking
| of this otherwise wacky idea that is plausible, given we
| are talking about george lucas here.
| larrywright wrote:
| I always heard the reason for that as "Jedis would never
| seek revenge", or something along those lines. Bottom
| line was that being a Jedi was incompatible with the idea
| of revenge.
| [deleted]
| throwaw4y-plate wrote:
| I don't think it would be very comfortable to rest in a null
| pointer.
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| I always remember Richard having a science lab as a child and
| would pay his younger sister to take electric shocks
| aborsy wrote:
| I wouldn't take those stories seriously. He spent a lot of time
| generating stories and anecdotes about himself.
|
| Today a PhD student would come up with something like path
| integrals and would barely be granted a PhD.
|
| Real science and showmanship are different things.
| aneutron wrote:
| In life, you sometimes learn that what is mathematical or
| cutting edge is not always synonymous with useful or
| revolutionary.
|
| "Hackers" of 1990s were just script kiddies by today's
| standards, because the "bar was low". That doesn't make them
| any less important as far as contributions go.
|
| All in all, maybe you are right, and maybe he is somewhat of
| a showman. But perhaps that is what we need more. Someone who
| masters science but also is human.
| mhh__ wrote:
| A PhD wouldn't be granted for reformulating quantum
| mechanics?
|
| Keep in mind, the Schrodinger equation was published less
| than 20 years prior to Feynman's PhD.
| aborsy wrote:
| It was considered "reformulation" back then. By today's
| standards, it's a conference paper and publishable if you
| combine it with politics.
|
| The diagrams would certainly be criticized today that they
| are graphical illustration of known expressions, not new
| and certainly not rigorous.
|
| Also, path integrals were taken right out of Dirac's so
| called little paper and Norbert wiener's papers. Dirac
| thought they are straightforward but not rigorous and was
| busy with other stuff anyways. Again today if you propose
| something like that, it would be rejected on the ground
| that it's not rigorous.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Feynman diagrams were criticised at the time. Dyson
| showed they were equivalent to Schwinger's methods, then
| people gradually realized they were physical as well as
| helpful.
| jules wrote:
| Perhaps, but that's not an indictment of Feynman, but an
| indictment of how you get a PhD nowadays. Today you get a PhD
| for something rigorous and technical and ultimately
| irrelevant compared to Feynman diagrams and path integrals.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Why is there no black bar on the site? (she may not have been in
| CS or tech as we know it, but...)
| rcarmo wrote:
| What is the point of downvoting this sort of thing? Is there no
| openness to discussing it?
| progman32 wrote:
| Part of the issue may be that the community doesn't know what
| the current rules are for activating the black bar. So it's
| difficult to discuss productively. I'd be surprised if
| there's any bad faith here. Anyone know how it works?
| tehjoker wrote:
| Pour one out for a real one. Rest in peace Joan Feynman.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| > Feynman was married with two children and, having not secured
| the kind of research position she was looking for, she decided to
| take a break from physics to take on the role of homemaker.
|
| > The break was short-lived, as Feynman grew depressed from the
| drudgery of keeping a home and caring for two small children: In
| 1962, at the advice of a therapist, she went in search of
| employment
|
| Imagine how many great minds the world lost to societal rules
| about women staying home and not having careers. The number of
| mediocre men who went out into the world when they could have
| stayed at home while their wife worked is mind boggling and
| terrible to think about.
| ddingus wrote:
| To me, this increases the value of family, the very important
| human work needed to help new people thrive.
|
| Perhaps we may continue to see expansion in gender role
| freedom.
|
| The human work is always there and the people who do it are
| often undervalued. Maybe that will change too.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Eh? If you actually read what you quoted you'd see that she
| tried to secure a position but failed and resigned to be a
| homemaker. There is no indication that it was anything to do
| with "societal rules". If men don't succeed in getting the
| position they want they too take on a less favourable role
| because they have to.
|
| You're really grasping at straws looking for things to be
| outraged by here.
| microtherion wrote:
| Have you considered that "societal rules" may have been the
| predominant reason she tried and failed to find suitable
| employment?
| MattGrommes wrote:
| Although I made the comment based on the quote about a
| particular woman, I was thinking more generally in my
| comment. The kind of feeling she had about staying home is
| echoed many times over by other women I'm sure.
|
| Thank you for concern at my level of outrage but I'll be
| fine.
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Imagine how many great minds the world lost to societal
| rules about women staying home and not having careers._
|
| Everyone has right to choose one thing between career & family.
|
| Society should not control each person on this choice.
|
| World not lost nothing on the result choice because
| invention/research never exists.
| ponker wrote:
| Incredible to see the resemblance with her brother Richard.
| Konohamaru wrote:
| Ooooh, no black bar for the womanly scientist. Is it because the
| female gender is too smooooth and pettable and it might overwhelm
| the handsome young men here?
| dang wrote:
| You've repeatedly posted flamebait and unsubstantive comments
| and used multiple accounts to break HN's guidelines. We ban
| accounts that do those things, so please stop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| crifex wrote:
| :(
| codezero wrote:
| That's a bummer. I used to work in solar physics so met her a few
| times and coauthored a conference proceeding with her. She was an
| exceptional scientist.
| DrBazza wrote:
| "For her fourteenth birthday, Richard gave Feynman a copy of
| Astronomy by Robert Horace Baker, a college-level physics text,
| that both taught her about physics and what was possible: Feynman
| credited a figure attributed to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin for
| proving to her that women could indeed have a career doing
| science."
|
| Fun fact: the new HS2 tunnel boring machine in the UK is named
| after Cecilia.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Its warming to see the impact that early positive mentorship can
| have over the span of a lifetime.
|
| I don't mean to say that without her brother she wouldn't have
| achieved great things. However, I think it's extraordinarily
| likely that he helped her find a passion that lead her all the
| way to the forefront of her field.
| enriquto wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Your wording sounds a little
| disparaging of her achievements. According to her wikipedia
| entry she was actually discouraged by her family to pursue a
| scientific career.
| ascar wrote:
| That's some first class cherry picking you did on the
| Wikipedia article. Here is the full relevant paragraph:
|
| "Like her brother, Joan was an inquisitive child, and she
| exhibited an interest in understanding the natural world from
| an early age. However, her mother and grandmother both
| dissuaded her from pursuing science, since they believed that
| women's brains were not physically capable of understanding
| complex scientific concepts in the way that men's brains
| could. Despite this, her brother Richard always encouraged
| her to be curious about the universe. It was he who
| originally introduced young Joan to auroras when, one night,
| he coaxed her out of bed to witness the northern lights
| flickering above an empty golf course near their home. Later,
| Feynman would find comfort in an astronomy book given to her
| by her brother. She became convinced that she could, in fact,
| study science, when she came across a graph based on research
| by noted astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Feynman
| enriquto wrote:
| You are right! I got lost reading the three references
| after "...in the way that men's brains could.", and did not
| read the rest of the paragraph. The first reference is
| amazing, with some cool photos of the two siblings.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Sorry for the wording, because I specifically didn't want to
| say that.
|
| My belief is that there is a huge amount of human potential
| left on the table because young people don't have access to
| good mentors.
| F_J_H wrote:
| No need to apologize. What you said was very clear, and the
| other commenter has apologized for not fully reading the
| information, which led to a misguided interpretation of
| your comment.
| Cilvic wrote:
| The article details that the positive part was her brother
| Richard Feynman (i love reading / watching him), while her
| mother is said to have been discouraging.
| [deleted]
| Quai wrote:
| Awesome woman, and a fascinating family!
|
| I'm no expert, so excuse my ignorance: Wasn't the "origin" of
| auroras know long before her time? I recall reading about
| Kristian Birkeland's terrella experiment where he demonstrated
| how the earths magnetic field would "focus" particles from the
| sun around the poles.
|
| Of course, this does not change the fact that she was a great
| scientist, and did important discoveries about aroras and
| astronomy in general.
| comment_ran wrote:
| Richard and Joan had a good father. Clearly, both of them were
| influenced by the father.
|
| ```
|
| Feynman:
|
| But my father, you see, interested me in patterns at the very
| beginning, and then later in things, like we would turn over
| stones and watch the ants carry the little white babies down
| deeper into the holes. We would look at worms. All the time
| playing -- when we'd go for walks, we'd look at things all the
| time, and then he'd tell me about things of every kind. The
| stars, the bugs, geometry things, and so on. He was always
| telling me interesting things -- the way birds fly, the way ocean
| waves work, or something, you see, the weather. I don't know why,
| any more, but there was always talking about the world, from
| every angle. Not just mathematics or anything like that, but the
| whole business he was interested in, and he was always telling me
| things. So he therefore developed somehow, inside me, more or
| less naturally, an interest in anything rational and scientific.
|
| ...
|
| Weiner:
|
| That's very interesting. Evidently your father's influence
| spread.
|
| Feynman:
|
| She said that it was because she would overhear us talking, and
| then she would ask me things, and I would explain it to her.
| That's what she says. It wasn't so direct in her case.
|
| ```
| _prototype_ wrote:
| This somewhat explains why the black community is under
| represented in science.
| kelnos wrote:
| It _is_ telling, though, that Richard was directly influenced
| by his father, but Joan had to get that influence secondhand.
| fs111 wrote:
| I read "Surely your joking Mr. Feynman" a few years ago, but to
| this day I somehow never knew he had a sister that was an
| accomplished scientist.
| ManuelKiessling wrote:
| Well,that probably says a lot about her brother...
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Maybe take the time to verify the assumption that his sister
| is not mentioned before jumping to a conclusion.
| miguelsm wrote:
| I found out about her through this very insightful interview
| recorded as a series of short videos:
|
| [1] https://webofstories.com/play/joan.feynman/1
|
| [2]
| https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwoLHwaKDx9oO...
| FlorianRappl wrote:
| That is true for me as well. Read a lot of things from Richard
| Feynman, even saw some videos / interviews with him. Never saw
| him mentioning her. Maybe just an oversight.
|
| RIP.
| glaberficken wrote:
| Same here. I guess in a way by not mentioning her a lot in
| public he was protecting her from only becoming known as
| "Richard Feynman's sister". That way you leave the room for
| the other person to emerge on her own terms.
| [deleted]
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Joan is mentioned frequently, she is a deep source of comfort,
| inspiration, and a voice of reason.
|
| > _One time I came home from college for a vacation, and my
| sister was sort of unhappy, almost crying: her Girl Scouts were
| having a fatherdaughter banquet, but our father was out on the
| road, selling uniforms. So I said I would take her, being the
| brother (I'm nine years older, so it wasn't so crazy)._
|
| > _During the conference I was staying with my sister in
| Syracuse. I brought the paper home and said to her, "I can't
| understand these things that Lee and Yang are saying. It's all
| so complicated." "No," she' said, "what you mean is not that
| you can't understand it, but that you didn't invent it. You
| didn't figure it out your own way, from hearing the clue. What
| you should do is imagine you're a student again, and take this
| paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check the equations.
| Then you'll understand it very easily." I took her advice, and
| checked through the whole thing, and found it to be very
| obvious and simple._
|
| > _I called up my sister in New York to thank her for getting
| me to sit down and work through that paper by Lee and Yang at
| the Rochester Conference. After feeling uncomfortable and
| behind, now I was in?_
|
| > _Just then my sister calls from New York: "How about the 9
| percent what's happened?" "I've just discovered that there's
| new data: 7 percent. . ." "Which way?" "I'm trying to find out.
| I'll call you back." I was so excited that I couldn't think.
| It's like when you're rushing for an airplane, and you don't
| know whether you're late or not, and you just can't make it,
| when somebody says, "It's daylight saving time!" Yes, but which
| way? You can't think in the excitement._
| peeters wrote:
| > _During the conference I was staying with my sister in
| Syracuse. I brought the paper home and said to her, "I can't
| understand these things that Lee and Yang are saying. It's
| all so complicated." "No," she' said, "what you mean is not
| that you can't understand it, but that you didn't invent it.
| You didn't figure it out your own way, from hearing the clue.
| What you should do is imagine you're a student again, and
| take this paper upstairs, read every line of it, and check
| the equations. Then you'll understand it very easily." I took
| her advice, and checked through the whole thing, and found it
| to be very obvious and simple._
|
| Can't help but think that has some relevance to programming.
| crdrost wrote:
| I mean it has some relevance to everything.
|
| I like to tell people that all learning is pain. It's a
| sort of contrarianism that I picked up from Buddhism, I
| guess, where the first noble truth is that everything is
| pain.
|
| A more careful restatement: we learn abstractions to
| organize experience, and we learn them only to the extent
| that they relieve a painful messiness in our experience. So
| the failure of the Haskell monad tutorial, to take one
| particular instance, is the failure of "look this was so
| hard for me that I must make it easy for others." Let's
| give pain relief before the problem sets in. Only problem
| is, "no pain no gain": you needed to experience that
| messiness and confusion before your brain could find a way
| to understand the underlying principles and organize it. So
| someone reads your tutorial and has even less of a clear
| idea because they now pretend to an abstract knowledge
| which they do not have any concrete experiences to tie it
| to.
|
| Caveat: this is how my brain works but I cannot be sure
| about others'.
| Cilvic wrote:
| I'm reading it at the moment too, loving it! Maybe halfway
| through _he hasn 't mentioned her once I believe._
|
| Edit: See below how she is mentioned.
| pjc50 wrote:
| While Richard Feynman's anecdotes are great entertainment,
| after a while you realise that the common theme is how great
| Richard Feynman is.
| mac01021 wrote:
| Well isn't the book just a compilation by RF's friend,
| constructed from interview sessions?
|
| I'm sure RF had a healthy ego, but I don't think he can be
| blamed entirely for this feature of the book.
| pistoriusp wrote:
| Odd, I fondly remember him mentioning her, and how important
| she was as a voice of reason to him.
|
| Update: I went looking for sources in the PDF, I've add them
| to the parent post. She was mentioned frequently.
|
| I actually even recall this story about the Auroras, but I
| cannot remember where I've heard it.
| mohit888 wrote:
| Really a great read. Its a huge loss!!!
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