Skip to content

Comment on Oppenheimer's recommendation letter for Richard Feynmanparent

Comments

I totally agree with you on this one. I dont't think that Feynman was truly regarded as normal. I mean, the guy liked to crack safes of high rank military officers in a wartime nuclear base to just screw with them. Disrespect to authority shouldn't have been normal at that time. Especially at Los Alamos.

His father was a MIL contractor, maybe it was uniforms -- or whatever that was a cover for (ie. not limbs).

Feynman's starring was high on the agenda for the then-authorities: he was basically the first (and only?) successful physicist "born and bred" in the USA, not being a self-proclaiming (or immigrant) Jew.

Of course, cracking a safe just to screw with someone (and, you know, to remind someone that their safes aren't in fact secure) is perhaps the single most honorable thing to do with a safe.

Better that the safe be left around for spies to infiltrate?

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.