Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1908-1972) - King Carl XVI Gustaf's Mother


If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Sibylla and Feynman

Apparently Princess Sibylla had quite an encounter with physicist Richard Feynman the year he won the Nobel. (I think I do recall something like this in his memoir...) Hark, a vagrant: 318


Feynman mentions two princesses whom he sat next to at the Nobel Prize dinner (having seen the menu, I can’t agree it was a banquet) and I would enjoy hearing what the experts here have to say. During the meal, he sat next to a Princess, he didn’t name her, but he said had been to a college in the US and so he expected her to be more worldly. But when he stopped the server from pouring wine into his glass, because he “didn’t drink”, she gave him a short lecture and told him to note that the server had 2 bottles, one of which contained liquid for those who didn’t drink.

After the meal, he walked around and then sat down next to another princess whom he claims was Danish. She gave him very short shrift, an icy stare and turned her back on him.

There is a photo of Feynman at the dinner, easily findable on the web, google Feynman Nobel dinner 1966, showing him sitting next to a princess, not identified anywhere on the web, but whom I believe firmly to be Sibylla. I originally thought this could not be her since she was only 58 at the time, but she did look older than her clock age in the 1960s.
Feynman is smoking which suggests post eating and to anyone who thinks he was impolite, by modern standards, smoking at the dinner table next to a princess, there is a picture of Sibylla a few years early at the Nobel dinner, sitting next to Linus Pauling and holding a cigarette under his nose. Both Feynman and Sibylla died of cancer in their 60s.

Is it possible that Feynman (or his ghost writer) got the Danish bit wrong (there are other more serious errors, perhaps deliberate in his recollections) and meant German Sibylla? This was the first Nobel dinner after the Queen died (earlier that year), so Sibylla would have been top lady, and I suspect she was not wearing a tiara like she did for Pauling, out of respect for the Queen.

So if anyone can add info here, like was there a Danish Princess? or confirm that really is Sibylla in the photo, I would be most grateful.
 
Feynman mentions two princesses whom he sat next to at the Nobel Prize dinner (having seen the menu, I can’t agree it was a banquet) and I would enjoy hearing what the experts here have to say. During the meal, he sat next to a Princess, he didn’t name her, but he said had been to a college in the US and so he expected her to be more worldly. But when he stopped the server from pouring wine into his glass, because he “didn’t drink”, she gave him a short lecture and told him to note that the server had 2 bottles, one of which contained liquid for those who didn’t drink.



After the meal, he walked around and then sat down next to another princess whom he claims was Danish. She gave him very short shrift, an icy stare and turned her back on him.



There is a photo of Feynman at the dinner, easily findable on the web, google Feynman Nobel dinner 1966, showing him sitting next to a princess, not identified anywhere on the web, but whom I believe firmly to be Sibylla. I originally thought this could not be her since she was only 58 at the time, but she did look older than her clock age in the 1960s.

Feynman is smoking which suggests post eating and to anyone who thinks he was impolite, by modern standards, smoking at the dinner table next to a princess, there is a picture of Sibylla a few years early at the Nobel dinner, sitting next to Linus Pauling and holding a cigarette under his nose. Both Feynman and Sibylla died of cancer in their 60s.



Is it possible that Feynman (or his ghost writer) got the Danish bit wrong (there are other more serious errors, perhaps deliberate in his recollections) and meant German Sibylla? This was the first Nobel dinner after the Queen died (earlier that year), so Sibylla would have been top lady, and I suspect she was not wearing a tiara like she did for Pauling, out of respect for the Queen.



So if anyone can add info here, like was there a Danish Princess? or confirm that really is Sibylla in the photo, I would be most grateful.
Princess Margaretha of Denmark was a frequent guest at the Nobel prize ceremonies and was judging by the picture present the year Richard Feynman received his award.
https://calisphere.org/item/e09281d690c898e22927208352956296/

The known photo tagged as Richard Heyman and a Swedish princess is of Richard and an unknown to me lady.
 
Last edited:
Princess Margaretha of Denmark was a frequent guest at the Nobel prize ceremonies and was judging by the picture present the year Richard Feynman received his award.
https://calisphere.org/item/e09281d690c898e22927208352956296/

The known photo tagged as Richard Heyman and a Swedish princess is of Richard and an unknown to me lady.


Thank you JR76.
If that is not Sibylla at the table with Feynman then I shall take the wise course in my book covering certain of Feynman’s activities from Dec 65 to Feb 66 (Nobel, seminar at CERN, Rio carnival) and make no reference whatsoever to princesses, not being an expert. He claimed in his book that he wore the same suit and tie during his CERN seminar that he did at the Nobel dinner a few days earlier. Alas for him, the CERN photographer exposed a roll of film at the end of his talk.
 
This is definitely Sibylla, along with her son(!), apparently wearing the Connaught tiara, although that's the chemistry winner, not Feynman. https://www.alamy.com/dec-12-1965-p...gustav-of-sweden-presented-image69419804.html

I agree, the lady he's smoking next to is not her (she seems to be in the row behind Sibylla?). Any relevant princess at the banquet would have been wearing the sash for the Order of the Seraphim, it seems.

Sibylla was known for having a slightly more difficult personality than Margaretha of Denmark, so it just feels like if Feynman was going to annoy a princess by being too flip and irreverent, she might be it. Of course, finding the evidence might be slightly harder.

Edit: there is the additional awkwardness of Sibylla potentially knowing Dick was Jewish (although he would certainly be neither the first nor the last Jewish Nobel winner she met) and him certainly not knowing her father was a dedicated Nazi. I can imagine full knowledge might have complicated conversation slightly.
 
Last edited:
This is definitely Sibylla, along with her son(!), apparently wearing the Connaught tiara, although that's the chemistry winner, not Feynman. https://www.alamy.com/dec-12-1965-p...gustav-of-sweden-presented-image69419804.html

I agree, the lady he's smoking next to is not her. Any relevant princess at the banquet would have been wearing the sash for the Order of the Seraphim, it seems.

Sibylla was known for having a slightly more difficult personality than Margaretha of Denmark, so it just feels like if Feynman was going to annoy a princess by being too flip and irreverent, she might be it. Of course, finding the evidence might be slightly harder.

Edit: there is the additional awkwardness of Sibylla potentially knowing Dick was Jewish (although he would certainly be neither the first nor the last Jewish Nobel winner she met) and him certainly not knowing her father was a dedicated Nazi. I can imagine full knowledge might have complicated conversation slightly.


Thank you Prinsara for your information and confirmation etc,
The sash attribute is interesting.

Feynman a declared atheist, always referred to himself as someone who just happened to have been born into a Jewish household, which is an interesting choice of words. He also described himself as a political ignoramus and indeed, at that time of that Nobel event, he was in the process of accepting an invitation to the carnaval from the extreme right wing Brazilian military dictatorship, which had just deleted a higher fraction of Brazil’s academia in one month than Germany did in the 1930s.

If he did chat to Sibylla, which now seems doubtful, I would have expected that her experience and diplomacy would have avoided any political contretemps with the guests of honour. Another thing Feynman said about himself was that he always said what he thought so he would have been the agency for any spats that occurred.
 
Thank you Prinsara for your information and confirmation etc,
The sash attribute is interesting.

Feynman a declared atheist, always referred to himself as someone who just happened to have been born into a Jewish household, which is an interesting choice of words. He also described himself as a political ignoramus and indeed, at that time of that Nobel event, he was in the process of accepting an invitation to the carnaval from the extreme right wing Brazilian military dictatorship, which had just deleted a higher fraction of Brazil’s academia in one month than Germany did in the 1930s.

If he did chat to Sibylla, which now seems doubtful, I would have expected that her experience and diplomacy would have avoided any political contretemps with the guests of honour. Another thing Feynman said about himself was that he always said what he thought so he would have been the agency for any spats that occurred.

You can say you're an atheist all you want; as someone who was in the "Jewish fraternity" at MIT pre-war, I'm certain Feynman knew it wasn't simply a matter of religion and the Nazis didn't make such fine distinctions — or care in the slightest. Despite his avoidance of politics it now makes me wonder how many "close brushes" he had with the regime, other than Sibylla. (Some of them may have been in Brazil.)

I'm quite aware he had no filter, which is why I said he was certainly unaware of Sibylla's originally-charged with crimes against humanity father.

If there were only two relevant princesses at the banquet (I'm not aware that foreign/unrelated royalty attend the Nobels, but one of the Swedish posters may know better), then it seems likely he got the temperance etiquette lecture from Sibylla and they got through dinner with no diplomatic incidents, and he somehow managed to irritate the Swedish-married-Danish Margaretha (if she didn't apparently refuse to speak to him for some sort of misinterpreted reason) — assuming Feynman did not mix their nationalities up in recollection. (I can't see that either princess ever had occasion to be in the US, let alone attend school there.)

Edit again: for the heck of it, I looked up what Sibylla's youngest daughter Christina had been doing at the time — and it turned out she had been attending Radcliffe in the recent past. So even if Dick managed to not be terribly interested in his fellow Cambridge, MA alum, nor mention she was 22 at the time and rather pretty — there is a third princess he could have been chatting with. :cool:

Or if Christina was not there, perhaps he mistook Sibylla saying her daughter had been studying in the US.
 
Last edited:
You can say you're an atheist all you want; as someone who was in the "Jewish fraternity" at MIT pre-war, I'm certain Feynman knew it wasn't simply a matter of religion and the Nazis didn't make such fine distinctions — or care in the slightest. Despite his avoidance of politics it now makes me wonder how many "close brushes" he had with the regime, other than Sibylla. (Some of them may have been in Brazil.)

I'm quite aware he had no filter, which is why I said he was certainly unaware of Sibylla's originally-charged with crimes against humanity father.

. . . .

Or if Christina was not there, perhaps he mistook Sibylla saying her daughter had been studying in the US.



Yes indeed Prinsara, however he described himself would have made no difference to his fate had he been in Germany between 1933 and 1945. And in 1965, at such a dinner in Stockholm, a subject best avoided.

In his book, he gave his version of his brief conversation with the Danish princess which she cut short and he could have done better. When he got up and left the table, a Japanese gentleman followed him and offered a short course in diplomacy.

As for the wine etiquette conversation, it now seems from the input here that it was with the still unidentified un-sashed princess in the photograph with him smoking. There is no evidence that he ever had a conversation at dinner with Sibylla.

So all that remains, and it may remain unsolved, is the identity of the princess without a sash sitting next to him at dinner. She looks 60+ish and possibly had a spell at a US college.

I am also struck by the fact that all the women have identical hair-styles, which led me originally to think it was Sibylla. It is almost as if they put their head into a machine before the ceremony and every hair came out the same.
 
The Nobel Laureates are always placed at the banquet with the hosts, who are the Swedish royals. The highest-rankers that year were the King, Princess Sibylla, and the visiting Princess Margaretha. I also saw Prince Bertil and Sibylla's son, the now current king Carl Gustav. And I'm unsure whether Princess Christina was there.

Even with three winners each in physics and medicine, I think there were enough royals to do banquet duty. We know he wasn't sitting with any male member of the family; we know he encountered Margaretha later, and so it would seem to be down to Sibylla. Etiquette-wise, he would not have been sat with any "lesser" guest at the banquet, and then the "studied in the US" clue, although muddled, actually seems to point to her.

If JR76 says the woman in the smoking, post-banquet picture (in which case she wouldn't be giving him a serving etiquette lesson) is not an unidentified princess, but no one recognizable as a princess (and almost certainly not a princess), I would take his word for it.

I confess I am curious as to why you have concluded the etiquette lady is not Sibylla.
 
The Nobel Laureates are always placed at the banquet with the hosts, who are the Swedish royals. The highest-rankers that year were the King, Princess Sibylla, and the visiting Princess Margaretha. I also saw Prince Bertil and Sibylla's son, the now current king Carl Gustav. And I'm unsure whether Princess Christina was there.

Yes, princess Christina was there in 1965.
https://historicimages.com/products/rsb78821
 
The Nobel Laureates are always placed at the banquet with the hosts, who are the Swedish royals. The highest-rankers that year were the King, Princess Sibylla, and the visiting Princess Margaretha. I also saw Prince Bertil and Sibylla's son, the now current king Carl Gustav. And I'm unsure whether Princess Christina was there.

Even with three winners each in physics and medicine, I think there were enough royals to do banquet duty. We know he wasn't sitting with any male member of the family; we know he encountered Margaretha later, and so it would seem to be down to Sibylla. Etiquette-wise, he would not have been sat with any "lesser" guest at the banquet, and then the "studied in the US" clue, although muddled, actually seems to point to her.

If JR76 says the woman in the smoking, post-banquet picture (in which case she wouldn't be giving him a serving etiquette lesson) is not an unidentified princess, but no one recognizable as a princess (and almost certainly not a princess), I would take his word for it.

I confess I am curious as to why you have concluded the etiquette lady is not Sibylla.

Thank you Prinsara and also LadyFinn.

I think we might now be able to bring some clarity! I went back and read the passages in Feynman's book carefully and in fact, during the dinner, he sat next to two ladies, one of whom he says was "a princess who had gone to college in the United States" and who he refers to as a "kid." From what you have said above, this sounds very much like it was Christina, who briefly went to Radcliffe College, Cambridge Mass.
https://historicimages.com/products/rse08865
She was 22 at the time of that dinner. From the only item of conversation that Feynman reported - a brief discussion on Feynman's suggestion that the King might benefit from the invention of a machine to shake hands, their senses of humour did not overlap too much.

The other person he sat next to was "the lady who was in charge of organising the dinner". It was with this lady that he had the discussion about wine etiquette.

If the photograph of Feynman at the dinner table smoking also includes one of these two women (and not some other un-named person), it can only have been the lady who organised the dinner for obvious reasons of age and her not wearing a sash.

This now becomes a matter for expert sleuths. If the identity of the dinner organiser in 1965 can be established, then this might simultaneously fix the identity of the woman in the photograph with Feynman.

Moving on to his encounter with another princess at the end of the dinner he says "There was a Princess Somebody of Denmark sitting at a table with a number of people around her, and I saw an empty chair at their table and sat down." From what everyone has said in this forum, it seems safe to conclude that this was Princess Margaretha, a member of the Swedish royal family by birth and of the Danish Royal family by marriage. This Swedish-Danish subtlety was never appreciated by Feynman and the conversation, which froze and foundered on the rocks of cultural differences, was short lived. And to close down one other possibility, it clearly isn't Margaretha in the photo with Feynman smoking.

And one remaining fragment, there is no evidence either in Feynman's book, nor in photographs, that he had a one to one conversation with Sibylla.

Very best regards to all.
 
Back
Top Bottom