Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 3:24AM

The late Professor Richard Feynman was a very clever man. Though he couldn’t speak until he was three years old he quickly made up for it. At 21 he was the youngest person to work on the Manhattan bomb project. He won the Nobel prize for discovering better ways of calaculating quantum electrodynamic forces. He invented the concept of nanotechnology in his 1959 lecture “There’s plenty of room at the bottom”. He figured out why the space shuttle Challenger blew up and proved NASA wrong. He could play the bongos, paint and his textbooks have sold millions of copies. Strangely he only had an ‘averagely high IQ’ of 123, but then tests aren’t everything.

He also enjoyed in his spare time picking up women in bars. Feynman was a scientist to his very core. When something didn’t work he wanted to know why. And that included picking up women. He used to go regularly to a sleazy bar in New Mexico and though he chatted to lots of girls he never once scored. And every time he ended up paying the bill. Finally a pair of friends- the MC who compered the entertainment at the bar and his attractive wife told him he had everything the wrong way round. They gave him three rules for success with women. These rules were based on the premise that women in know that men want to appear a gentleman and not a tightwad. They exploit this to get what they want. When they are focused on getting what they want you never get what you want.

So Rule One is: Disrespect women. Never be a gentleman. Rule Two: never pay for anything. Rule Three: Never pay for anything unless they have agreed to go to bed with you and you know they aren’t lying.

The friends added that it would work for all women, not just women in a bar seeking a good time.

As a scientist Feynman felt duty bound to test these unlikely propositions. He spent the evening working himself up into a fervour of disrespectful thoughts aimed at women in general. Instead of projecting his usual considerate and likeable demeanor he focused on the show and didn’t even glance at any lovelies who manoeuvred themselves into his line of vision. When one asked if she could sit next to him he muttered ‘suit yourself’. The technique worked. He got into a conversation, bought no drinks and found himself walking the girl to her hotel. But then, in a moment of weakness he bought her a coffee and a sandwich on the way. Suddenly she changed her tune and announced she’d got a date with someone else. Enraged, Feynman demanded the money back for her coffee. He returned to the bar disconsolate but his friends congratulated him on being so tough. He thought he’d failed but they told him to wait. Sure enough at 2am the women popped her head back into the bar and told him to come up to her room.

Anxious to increase the statistical sample Feynman attempted the same trick on a girl he met at a dance at Cornell university. She was the sister of a fellow grad student. They went to the bar and ordered drinks and she waited for him to pay. Feynman said, “Before I pay I just want to know will you sleep with me?”

“Yes.”

And she kept her word.

QED as the scientists say.

There is more of this kind of thing in the book 'Real Men Eat Pufferfish' by Robert Twigger