I would take Feynmans stories with a grain of salt, he was sometimes quite liberal with the facts when trying to make a point (in particular he liked to give the impression that he was the only smart guy in the room).

The actual history is a bit more complex and certainly is not reflected accurately in Feynmans retelling (maybe he was affected by confirmation bias?). See this stackoverflow discussion: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/44092/is-feynma...