This may be an American thing

Not exclusively; that also happens with a sizeable fraction of the population in Italy and Ireland. It may depend on what teachers one has had -- people who were made to study sciences at school with poor teachers and struggle to understand it might be still be resenting that -- and I guess that science education in the US, Italy or Ireland is particularly awful (compared to, say, Scandinavia).

(This effect also seems to be at work -- when someone my wingman and I have just cold-approached asks what we do and we say we study physics, most of the times they seem to all but untranslatable 1, whereas if it's someone who's already seem me sing/dance/whatever and already thinks I'm cool, they usually swoon.)

Also, ISTM that plenty of laymen outside America have never heard of Feynman.

EDIT: OTOH in Italy and Ireland IME this only affects “pure” sciences; engineers and medics are usually seen as high-status.