What was the name of Richard Feynman's first wife?

The story behind the answer

Richard Feynman's first wife was Arline Greenbaum. They were high-school sweethearts in Far Rockaway, Queens, and remained devoted despite the severe tuberculosis that afflicted her.

Feynman married Arline on June 29, 1942, while he was completing his doctoral work at Princeton and preparing to join the Manhattan Project. Because she was seriously ill, the couple married in a small civil ceremony on Staten Island, witnessed by strangers rather than attended by family and friends. Feynman then visited her on weekends while working at Los Alamos.

Arline died in 1945, before the end of World War II. Feynman later described their relationship with great tenderness, and her death remained one of the defining personal tragedies of his life. The story is sometimes confused with Feynman's later marriages: Mary Louise Bell was his second wife, while Gweneth Howarth became his third wife. The surname Greenbaum is therefore the key detail that distinguishes his first marriage from the others.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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