Sex and physics!

I just like using these titles, little excuse is necessary. But I do have one: this article in Seed about philandering physicists. The point being that famous physicists of yore were often secret Casanovas, scribbling equations in their downtime between romantic trysts. I'm not sure this thesis would hold up to further scrutiny; it shouldn't be too hard to come up with numerous counterexamples. It's true that Einstein was more the raconteur than you might think, but I just can't imagine, say, Julian Schwinger seducing young women with his patter about source theory. (Sir Isaac Newton reputedly died a virgin.) But there was an interesting question raised at the end of the article, about whether the apparent lack of dashing Don Juans on the current scene was emblematic of some change in the culture of modern physics. Or maybe we just haven't heard about it yet. Besides, these days physicists ...