Feynman’s son, born in 1962, was named Carl.
Carl was the biological son of Richard Feynman and Gweneth Howarth, whom Feynman married in 1960. The couple later adopted a daughter, Michelle, in 1968. This makes Carl and Michelle the two children associated with Feynman’s lasting family life at Caltech and in Altadena, California.
Carl’s birth came during one of the most productive periods of Feynman’s career. In 1962, Feynman was a professor at Caltech and was helping develop the lectures that became The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Those lectures, delivered during the early 1960s and published in three volumes, became an influential introduction to university-level physics.
The year 1962 can also cause confusion because Feynman received the Ernest O. Lawrence Award that year, two years before the first volume of his lectures appeared and three years before his Nobel Prize. Carl should not be confused with Feynman’s sister Joan, an astrophysicist, or with his adopted daughter Michelle.