[Kliment]

http://www.fotuva.org/online/frameload.htm?/online/science.h...

When he talks about his time at Cornell: "She went on and said, "Suppose you have another line coming in from the other side, and you want to figure out where they are going to intersect. Suppose on one line you go over two to the right for every one you go up, and the other line goes over three to the right for every one that it goes up, and they start twenty steps apart," etc.--I was flabbergasted. She figured out where the intersection was. It turned out that one girl was explaining to the other how to knit argyle socks. I, therefore, did learn a lesson: The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry. Those people who have for years been insisting (in the face of all obvious evidence to the contrary) that the male and female are equally capable of rational thought may have something. The difficulty may just be that we have never yet discovered a way to communicate with the female mind. If it is done in the right way, you may be able to get something out of it."

[apmee]

Interesting, thanks. But, without meaning to excuse it, I do wonder how much of that was

a) tongue in cheek (given that it was an informal talk rather than an essay or article)

b) just a reflection of the general attitudes of the era

c) indeed down to personal prejudice

I'm guessing though that whatever prejudices he had must have been re-evaluated by the time he encouraged his sister to go into science

[sundarurfriend]

This is not an isolated case either. There are quite a few incidents in print where Feynman shows he had the traditional mindset about females (to put it mildly).

Quoting [1]: 'The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest "girl" and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. "Yes, it really annoys me," she said. "On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it." That was the essence of Richard's charm.'

However, afaik that was mostly because of (b), the general attitudes of the time.

[1]http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A... (Google cache since the original page seems down)