Feynman

Tom Hill and others: What can you tell us about Richard Feynman’s interest in wine?

I heard he did not like corks but liked to check for o rings

He was tee-total after a certain point I his life, when he found himself drinking irrationally. Per his first wet of memoirs.

Ha.

That’s a challenging tale.

My uncle knew him from the Manhattan Project; and said he was a bit of a showboat who liked to drink wine and play the bongos.

That’s quite a party trick

Who was your Uncle, Mark? If he knew Richard well enough to characterize him as a showboat, then he had to have worked at LosAlamos.
Tom

Teller was the showboat

Bingo, Bill. Couldn’t agree more.
Very full of himself.
Tom

Old men criticizing dead scientists…riveting stuff.

Umm…old?

Teller and Feynman were much different types of showboats.

-Al

Beats criticizing old men shaking their fists at the sky, no?

He did (or at least the Manhattan Project, not sure where), his name was Robert Ehrenfeld; he specialized in halogen chemistry, especially Fluorine. He went on to a very successful career (his company is called Halocarbon Products - he passed away in 2007 and the company is now run by my cousin Emily, also a chemist) in manufacturing various halogen compounds like Halothane, an anesthetic; and at one point he made a whole bunch of money when the waste product of one of his plants ended up being a replacement for Freon so all he had to do was tweak the process in the factory to optimize for the waste product. He also made gyro-flotational fluid and specialized industrial solvents and reagents iirc.

Feynman was invited in 1961 to teach an Introductory physics class at CalTech.
Here is Feynman, in his own voice, speaking on wine in one of those lectures:

One of the things to notice in this video…the lack of females in the classroom.
Tom

Thanks for the reference to your Uncle, Mark. I looked thru the LosAlamos personal data base and could not find a reference to him being at LosAlamos.
His name does not pop up in the Atomic Heritage Foundation profile data base, either. Which simply means that nobody has bothered to enter
his profile in that data base. All the Google searches I did made no mention of his location during the ManhattanProject work yrs.
Given his background, connections, and later work; I would be almost certain that he worked those war yrs at Site X or the Clinton Engineering Works,
at OakRidge, TN. That’s where they were doing the gaseous diffusion separation of U-235. They would convert the uranium metal into
uranium hexaflorude (UF-6) that they would diffuse thru cascades of pourous membranes (Graham’s Law) to concentrate the U-235.
UF-6 is nasty/nasty/corrosive stuff. Given Robert’s background, I would not be surprised that he worked on lubricants for the pumps that
pumped the UF-6 thru the cascades.
That said, he probably didn’t know Feynman personally but undoubtedly did know him by reputation. PFC Richard Feynman at Los Alamos was a bigger-than-life
character.
I’m a big history buff of the Manhattan Project, mostly of those doing the Physics stuff, so glad to add your Uncle to my data base. I’ll be sharing my
dinner wine this afternoon w/ JohnBalagna, one of the chemists at LosAlamos then, and see if he recognizes the name.
You might send this comment to Emily if she has any further knowledge.
Tom

Hmmm, Al…I’m assuming you’re basing this characterization of Feynman on his appearance on the Challenger panel?
I would characterize that not as “showboating” as I would use of a bit of dramatic showmanship to make a scientific point.
Subtle difference there, in my mind.
Tom

Actually, Mark…I found out that Feynman was transferred briefly to OakRidge to work on criticality calulations for the safe handling of enriched Uranium.
And, after the War, went to Cornell to work for Hans Bethe.
So he could very well have known Feynman personally.
Tom

Not for David because it’s about “old men talking about dead scientists”.
To address Kim’s original post, I trace my wine passion directly back to Feynman, as described
in a WB post in 2017:

A few corrections to that tale, it was the mid-'80’s that Feynman came to LosAlamos to give his talk & when I met him.
His close friend, Paul Zweifel, I’m not sure how they developed that friendship. Paul, much like Feynman, was very much a jokester.
On a lark, in one of his early Caseology papers, referred to an obviously important paper, authored by one “C.Lingus”. People searched
the literature desperately trying to find that paper (remember, this was way back before Google). Finally, yrs later,
Paul revealed it was all a joke. And you all thought physicists were stodgy/boring people!!

I, of course, have no knowledge, firsthand, of what Feynman drank (anybody who did is dead by now) nor how he developed an interest
in wine. Knowing the high academic circles in which Richard traveled, I would guess it was in his academic yrs that somebody introduced him to wine.
Feynman’s father was Jewish and a sales manager in Queens, originally from Minsk, Lithuania; so unlikely that he got it from his father. I’ve been unable
to find anything about his drinking habits whilst here in LosAlamos (we have a neat T-shirt here of which JakeBilbro has one, that says:
“Los Alamos…a drinking town with a serious science problem”).

This gives a very good (not so) short description of Feynman’s life.

In point of fact, his contributions to the Manhattan project were mostly on the margins, and it did not play a highly
significant role in developing the atomic bomb. But he certainly livened things up here.

Feynman was a personality bigger than life. During his days at CalTech, he developed a devoted following amongst the student body.
It was then that he was teaching his undergraduate class on An Introduction to Physics. Can you imagine a Nobel prize winner teaching
an Introductory class? But it was (from the video above) a very entertaining speaker & lecturer.
Susan (who is from Pasadena) recounts on the days after his death in '88, there were dozens of banners flying from the student dorm windows
in tribute to him.
I often (about once a month) give friends a personal tour of the Bradbury Museum (one of the Nation’s best science museums) and when I
get to the display of Feynman and starting recounting stories, I can’t help but tear up.

So…that’s my story & I’m sticking to it. Sorry I can’t do better, Kim.
“Old men talking about dead scientists”!! As riveting as it gets on WB sometimes!!
Tom