Were you joking, Mr. Feynman?

My host asked me if I knew what a Venus of Willendorf was. I had seen them but didn’t know the name. He told me that when he was a student of physics at Cal Tech he was there at the same time as Richard Feynman was teaching physics. He is one of my inspirations for studying physics but also a role model and the sort of person I wish I could be like, personality-wise, and for my failed attempts at being light about life and not caring what other people think).

He did not officially take any courses with Feynman but he audited one and said it was a great experience. He also met with him a number of times. Anyway, my host’s father created the first computer simulated sculpture (and he says he himself wrote the programming for it). He got into sculpting a bit, too, and he admits he is an excellent welder. He put together his own interpretation of the Venus of Willendorf though his sculpture is quite abstract and I don’t really know if anyone would guess it was a Venus of Willendorf if nobody told them. He showed me the sculpture and I knew what it was so I could see it. I guess there was some sort of event at Cal Tech where he put it on display. Mr. Feynman walked up to it, looked at it, touched it on one of the iron panels that makes up the breasts, and said, “Very nice!” and then walked right on by.

My host likes to think that Mr. Feynman knew very well this was a Venus of Willendorf and that this was more than just an appreciation of his art but one of those delightfully mischievous goofball things that make Richard Feynman such a unique character in the world. He asked me what I thought: was he feeling her up? I touched the sculpture too. I actually touched a sculpture that might have been touched by Richard Feynman! LOL, no, it was touched by Richard Feynman, but somehow it is so hard to believe that this incident even happened. This thing belongs in a museum. Was Mr. Feynman pulling one of his jokes when he touched this sculpture? I will be pondering that question for the rest of my life.

(The one on the left is called Energy because it resembles a force field. The one on the right is the Venus of Pasadena.)