Toni Feder’s photo story “Snapshots from the life of Cécile DeWitt-Morette” on the Physics Today website (10 October 2017) brought back fond memories about my mother and more than a few smiles! I would like to correct one anecdote, though, which I gather came from my sister Chris when she provided background on our mother without knowing it was incorrect.The error, I know, would have saddened Cécile had she read it. It had to do with her reason for not marrying Peng Huan-wu, her adviser at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1947. The story says it was because he wasn’t French, but that was not the case.Cécile did indeed tell us she used the excuse that our father, Bryce DeWitt, was not French (or Catholic) for her initial reluctance to marry him, though they wed in 1951. But her reasons for not marrying Peng were quite different. She was very much in love with him and would have married him, but it was the late 1940s and he was returning to China, which was in the midst of a civil war. When he left, he offered her a one-way ticket to Hong Kong and told her that from there he could get her into China. In her words, recorded during a series of interviews I filmed with her in 2003, “I chickened out. Honestly, I thought I’d be a problem for him in a country in turmoil and not speaking the language. And I was scared by the possibility that I would never be able to go back to France.”So her fear of being a burden to him as a foreigner in China and the idea of not seeing her country again were what led her to turn him down.They continued to communicate even after he returned to China, until early 1950. His letters, which Chris recently uncovered, reveal a generous, wise man who continued to love her and to hope she would accept his offer but who knew it would be too difficult for her. That she kept his letters reveals the depth of her feelings toward him. She told me that she visited the newly opened China in 1982 as part of a US scientific delegation, and even then, when she saw him again for the first time since Dublin, there was still something “special” between them. When the officials told the delegation some cars were waiting to take them somewhere, Peng told them, “No, this one walks with me.” She recalled that as the two of them walked, he simply told her, “I’m so glad that you’re still wearing sensible shoes.”I took Cécile with me on a business trip to China in 2004, and I had the privilege of accompanying her as she met up once more with Peng, who by then was in his nineties. When we were in his apartment, she opened up her old photo album of Dublin, and I saw his demeanor completely transform: He switched suddenly from communicating formally with her through an interpreter to speaking perfect English, and the two of them disappeared into another world, another time, two old dear friends kidding each other and reminiscing. Later that day, Cécile gave a talk at Peking University, with Peng in attendance. What surprised me the most was that the Chinese lecture attendees all seemed aware of the special relationship between the two of them.Thank you for writing so nicely about Cécile and for the opportunity to reminisce about this old love story. Section:ChooseTop of page <<CITING ARTICLES© 2019 American Institute of Physics.
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Nov 1, 2020
Timofey Levchenko 
Open Access
