Murray Gell-Mann's unflattering description of Richard Feynman

[Alfred001]

From 1:40 on, you can hear him give an unflattering description of Feynman, describing him as obsessed with generating anecdotes about himself. Now, at the moment, I'm reading Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman and I came to the book having already heard these criticisms from MGM and I was looking for sign of these kind of character traits and while I thought I saw them in some of the early chapters (where he would describe these counterintuitive systems that he would come up with for doing this or that that other people couldn't appreciate), later on there were things that ran contrary to this image of an egomaniac obsessed with making myths about himself that MGM describes or implies.

For example he would often talk about how other scientists were superior to him at this or that or openly talk about how he was afraid of not living up to a masculine ideal in sports or physical confrontations... he doesn't seem in the book to have a problem with being honest about his own shortcomings or where others were his betters. I found him, in reading the book, a delightful character.

Anyway, I was wondering, are there any other people who knew him who made similar criticisms of him? And do you think there really was in him this desire to build the myth of Richard Feynman?

[StringJunky]

He worked with him and had the opportunities to see his idiosyncrasies. We all have them.

Edited July 22, 2023 by StringJunky

[Genady]

I remember Susskind mentioning that Feynman "certainly was a showman".

Edited July 22, 2023 by Genady

[exchemist]

3 minutes ago, Genady said:

I remember Susskind mentioning that Feynman "certainly was a showman".

He was clearly that. But then so are many of the best educators. Often, however, these are not the best researchers. Feynman seems to have managed to combine both. But there was obviously quite a big ego at work.

[StringJunky]

If a bit of narcissism got him where he was, science may be all the poorer if he didn't have it.

[CharonY]

3 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

If a bit of narcissism got him where he was, science may be all the poorer if he didn't have it.

I don't think that science would be necessarily poorer, at least not directly. Though science popularizers can indirectly improve science by raising general interest (though I have the feeling that things are getting a bit worse now). 

Many scientists I know are more of the nose to grindstone types of folks and they (we) are often a bit suspicious of the more showy scientists. Generally speaking, I tend to be a bit more suspicious of highly charismatic or influential folks as there is always the risk that their work faces a bit less scrutiny than junior scientists. I.e. the persona might at some point start to influence their science.