7 Things Richard Feynman’s Love Letter Can Teach Us About Love

He wrote a letter to his wife sixteen months after her death

Camille Allard
4 min readOct 5, 2020
Image by Herbanu Tri Sasongko from Pixabay

Richard Feynman was a curious man. “I’m an explorer, OK? I like to find out!” His curiosity won him the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965.

Richard and his wife, Arline Greenbaum, were soul mates.

His love for life gave him the status of an American cultural icon. Feynman wrote many love letters to his wife, Arline.

He wrote to his wife, his daughter Michelle, scientists, fans, students, crackpots as well as strangers. Michelle Feynman collected his words in a book, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track.

He discussed everything from the Manhattan Project to developments in quantum physics and grade-school textbooks in these letters. He wrote with clarity, grace, humor, and optimism.

“Physics isn’t the most important thing. Love is.” ~ Richard P. Feynman

Of these letters, the most beautiful is the one Richard wrote to his wife Arline sixteen months after her death.

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

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Camille Allard
Camille Allard

Written by Camille Allard

A nineteen year old French girl, living in London. I write about love, psychology, and sexology.

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