The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (1992) (opens in new tab)

And he only went to MIT as an undergraduate because his first choice Columbia had a "Jew quota" and they had already admitted all the Jews they wanted to for that year. Besides the antisemitism, it's also a reminder that in the 1930s MIT was seen as a good, but not particularly elite school and would be somebody's backup school.

I graduated from MIT undergrad a few years ago. There were certainly no restrictions on cultural background in the fraternities, though certain fraternities (and some dorm floors) did have reputations for having disproportionate of people coming from a particular ethnicity (e.g. asian) or heading towards a particular career path (e.g. finance, or medicine). FWIW I almost joined a frat that I would've been a minority in, but I never felt excluded while rushing that or any of the other frats.

There were a ton of membership organizations that, probably even quite a bit later, required one or more members to vouch for you and generally excluded people who didn't fit the generally WASPy mold. (And often male--male only organizations were quite widespread until relatively recently and AFAIK frats--as well as sororities--can be single-sex but mostly based on the fact that some level of living arrangements are OK to restrict one sex or the other.)

More recently it would be self-professed gays. A frat might feel the gay might come on to them, or brand the entire frat as gay. The other similarity is there is at least one predominantly gay frat.

These days there is so much gay publicity, that many young people would no longer think this is an issue, as it no is with Black and Jewish members.

How is "womanizing" a concept that makes sense, or has any meaning in modern times?

If I understand correctly, it describes a man that only has casual relationships with women. The implication being that all woman only want long term committed relationships, and any man doing this must be somehow exploiting or tricking the woman.

Nowadays, it is widely accepted that preferring casual relationships is within the range of normal preferences for both men and women- some people prefer it, others don't. If both women and men can choose and prefer consenting casual relationships, the concept that a man can be a "womanizer" seems to be paternalistic and infantizing to women. It also implies some sort of old fashioned 'duty' on the part of a man to essentially marry anyone he dates, even if they realize they are incompatible, and neither has a desire to stay together.

I feel like his womanizing behavior was bad and that it was also somehow wrapped up in his attention seeking and other self promoting drives that made him so well known. I don't think it should be hidden.

That’s a pretty typical Gell-Mann quote, and I don’t think he meant anything bad about it.

Yes, it's all the way up there. As these coincidenses will sometimes have it, I just dug out my old paperback copy from the basement a few days ago, and looking mightily forward to a reread.