> there's also Feynman the egotistical misogynistic alleged wife beater
I find it rather unlikely he was a wife beater considering what I've read about the relationship with his ill wife. It seems far more likely this is gossip spread by folks on a mission to slander great men of the past. If you can't provide any actual evidence backing that claim, you should really refrain from spreading such things IMHO.
Feynman did not return to Cornell. Bacher, who had been instrumental in bringing Feynman to Cornell, had lured him to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Part of the deal was that he could spend his first year on sabbatical in Brazil.[123][108] He had become smitten by Mary Louise Bell from Neodesha, Kansas. They had met in a cafeteria in Cornell, where she had studied the history of Mexican art and textiles. She later followed him to Caltech, where he gave a lecture. While he was in Brazil, she taught classes on the history of furniture and interiors at Michigan State University. He proposed to her by mail from Rio de Janeiro, and they married in Boise, Idaho, on June 28, 1952, shortly after he returned. They frequently quarreled and she was frightened by his violent temper. Their politics were different; although he registered and voted as a Republican, she was more conservative, and her opinion on the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing ("Where there's smoke there's fire") offended him. They separated on May 20, 1956. An interlocutory decree of divorce was entered on June 19, 1956, on the grounds of "extreme cruelty". The divorce became final on May 5, 1958.[124][125]
Obviously, Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but it's not particularly contested that Feynman was a wife-beater to Wife No. 2.
"The divorce had a fleeting life in the national press--not because Feynman was a celebrity, but because columnists and cartoonists could not overlook the nature of the extreme cruelty: Prof Plays Bongos, Does Calculus In Bed. "The drums made terrific noise," his wife had testified. And: "He begins working on calculus problems in his head as soon as he awakens . . . He did calculus while driving his car, while sitting in the living room and while lying in bed at night.""
As far as I can tell they went through that route so they could get a quick divorce and not have to go through a cooling-off period.
I find it rather unlikely he was a wife beater considering what I've read about the relationship with his ill wife. It seems far more likely this is gossip spread by folks on a mission to slander great men of the past. If you can't provide any actual evidence backing that claim, you should really refrain from spreading such things IMHO.