Well he had a Nobel prize in physics on his hands for starters, that's one way to tell the difference. Granted, noone's infallible, but it's a good predictor. Not that it would have spared him from fizzbuzz on the interview these days..
I'd hope an interviewer would view an applicant's fizzbuzz as a pleasant surprise if it came with a bit of casual mathematical proof.
With the preface that I know that a higher calibre of comment is expected from me in this community, it's still the truth: I lol'd.
That said there is an individual far worse than the brilliant teammate that's hard to understand. These are people whose ability to listen is worse than their technical aptitude. Just one of them in a meeting will destroy all progress, and disrupt any ideas that don't mesh with their preexisting thoughts.
They only used 5 when it turned out they couldn't manufacture 7 and had no other choice. So they only trusted his analysis out of desperation / wishful thinking, not out of objective reasoning.
Additionally parent comment complains about people like Feynman not being able to communicate. But there is nothing about that in the story. It goes on and on about how Feynman was a great communicator and explained his ideas clearly.
Feynmann himself disdained this sort of lone genius puffery. He was critical of this in Murray Gell-Mann. I don't think Feynmann was a loner at all. He had people he liked and could relate to, and other people he didn't like and relate to, just like anyone.
I've been on the receiving end of these kinds of analysis and the result is that they seem to exist purely to showcase how smart the individual is and to provide no other meaningful input to the effort.
Bingo! Always look at the cost/benefit to the group. Everyone who seems like this on the surface tells themselves that they are striking a blow for the truth. But what is the overall effect? Did they primarily bring the group's perception of the truth closer to reality, or did they mostly establish themselves as the Alpha nerd? It's usually both, but what is the mix? Is the undertone one of kindness, or one of cruelty?
there's lots of people who think they're Feynman and aren't and it's hard to tell the difference sometimes
The same goes for Steve Jobs in the Bay Area.
Lots of time is wasted trying to figure out how to get the rest of the company to communicate with the lone genius, and it's obvious that they're smart enough to go away for a week and learn enough of the field they're working in to try to use the language and vocabulary of that field to be minimally effective.
I've been on the receiving end of these kinds of analysis and the result is that they seem to exist purely to showcase how smart the individual is and to provide no other meaningful input to the effort. In this case the engineers ignored Feynman, did their own analysis anyways and followed their own conclusion...the subtext here is that multiple people were not getting along with Feynman's way of doing things.
He turned out right in the end of course, because Feynman, but there's lots of people who think they're Feynman and aren't and it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.