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“[Paul Olum] was president of the University of Oregon when he heard of [Richard] Feynman’s death. He realized that the young genius he had met at Princeton had become a part of him, impossible to extricate. “My wife died three years ago, also of cancer,” he said.

... I think about her a lot. I have to admit I have Dick’s books and other things of Dick’s. I have all of the Feynman lectures and other stuff. And there are things that have pictures of Dick on them. The article in Science about the Challenger episode. And also some of the recent books.

I get a terrible feeling every time I look at them. How could someone like Dick Feynman be dead? This great and wonderful mind. This extraordinary feeling for things and ability is in the ground and there’s nothing there anymore.

It’s an awful feeling. And I feel it—— A lot of people have died and I know about it. My parents are both dead and I had a younger brother who is dead. But I have this feeling about just two people. About my wife and about Dick.

I suppose, although this wasn’t quite like childhood, it was graduate students together, and I do have more—— I don’t know, romantic, or something, feelings about Dick, and I have trouble realizing that he’s dead. He was such an extraordinarily special person in the universe.

Gleick, James (2011-02-22). Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (p. 145). Open Road Media. Kindle Edition.”
― Jame Gleick quoting Paul Olum