He didn't have a PhD? That's the coolest thing!
Anyways, why his passing isn't a bigger deal speaks to the horrible scientific sub-literacy of our country.
96
His writing was so enjoyable to read. He was able to make really difficult concepts easy to understand.
23
Re “ Richard Feynman, a young professor at Cornell, had invented a novel method to describe the behavior of electrons and photons (and their antimatter equivalent, positrons)“ in paragraph 21:
That’s behavior of electrons and PROTONS, not photons, and their antimatter equivalent, positrons and ANTI-PROTONS.
39
Wow!
With all that extra-dimensional insight and intelligence, he bought that jacket
Gives a little comfort to diminutive thinkers like me that even I would know better.
24
Eh, no-one's perfect. But he came a lot closer than most.
10
Dyson compares himself to Eichmann. From Sven Lindqvist’s A History of Bombing: “Freeman Dyson, who became one of the 20th century’s leading nuclear physicists, was hired in his youth as a civilian employee by [RAF Air Marshal Arthur] Harris’s office. He served as an operations analyst at the time of the firestorm in Hamburg. … ‘I sat in my office until the end, carefully calculating how to murder most economically another hundred thousand people.’ After the war he compared himself to the bureaucratic-murderers working in Eichmann’s death machine: ‘They sat in their office, writing memoranda and calculating how to murder people efficiently, just like me. The main difference was that they were sent to jail or hanged as war criminals, and I went free.”
36
"He was religious, but in an unorthodox way, believing good works to be more important than theology."
I am no theologian, but I believe that was Christ's way, too.
51
This is going to be a technical comment, aimed at physicists or amateur ones. Back in the early 1990's, when the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was a hotly pursued and equally hotly argued topic, the major concern of most participants on both sides was its cost. That cost was expected to be about 10-14 billion dollars. The SSC's raison d'etre, it will be remembered, was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle known to be within the reach of the SSC as it was designed.
I remember an article or short piece by Dyson about the SSC in the New York Review of Books. In his article, Dyson bemoaned the large cost of the SSC vis-à-vis the value (he thought) of discovering the Higgs boson. Dyson proposed that someone should come up with a "table-top" experiment that could answer the question of the Higgs's existence much more cheaply. What Dyson forgot was Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle: In order to probe the tiny distances that characterized the "size" of the Higgs boson -- one thousandth the size of a proton -- the enormous energy of the SSC, tens of trillions of electron volts, is required.
This cost issue, and other arguments, killed the SSC. Fortunately, the Europeans weren't convinced. With substantial American participation, they built the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva and, on July 4, 2012, two experimental collaborations -- of over 2500 physicists and engineers each -- triumphantly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson.
39
I'm not sure what people mean by praising with phrases such as thinking "outside the box" which is pretty empty and meaningless; but Dr. Dyson seemed to "think" wherever his mathematics led him, whether to conventional conclusions or to non-conventional ones. That, to me, represents a truly free mind.
21
For many trekkies, the name Freeman Dyson will forever be associated with the "Dyson Sphere" in Star Trek -The next Generation- episode entitled Relics. He apparently did not consider his idea of a sphere containing a star serious but was said to have enjoyed the program.
18
I like to imagine him, now, calmly petting Schrodinger's cat-- or trying to -- both of them purring with curiosity and contentment.
49
What a great scientist Dyson is! I had not not thought of him in years. In this age when science is no longer understood, valued or utilized for good, we would do well to study Dyson’s life work. In the future, when science is once again given the respect it deserves, his discoveries will be valued once more. Thank you for your enlightening obituary.
47
I lived quite close to The Institute for Advanced Study for many years, often encountering 7 or 8 years olds wandering the grounds deep in thought.. Unfortunately it seems, we had a different water supply.
16
"Teaching, he soon realized, was not for him."
That's not what I recall in Disturbing the Universe. Shortly after he arrived at Princeton he went to the dean and asked when he would be getting his teaching timetable. Dean: "You don't seem to understand, Dr Dyson. This is the Institute for Advanced Studies. You don't do teaching." Dyson, in reply: "It's you who don't understand. I want a timetable."
I recall Dyson went on to say that advanced undergraduates were the very best foil to the certainties of science--they don't know enough to know what's "impossible"; they are wonderful for generating new scientific ideas.
42
My gosh I've met a curmudgeon greater than I
9
Dyson said: “The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.”
Yes, I agree with that statement, but even if you come up with the answers, there is still unsolved mystery of the origin of the "vast universe" in the first place.
Did the universe invent itself?
14
@ernieh1
Yes. Obviously.
Even if it's a multiverse, there's still no alternative,
5
Nice work if you can get it.
5
Sometimes I'm in the sway of the impulse to go against whatever someone else is advocating, anything. And I don't expect my contrary statements, sometimes very capricious, to be either accepted or denounced. They are an invitation to play. Like a cat swatting at you to get something going.
My guess is that Dyson often entered that mode, and others stopped short of going along with the playful explorations ... were too inflexible or pre-occupied to play.
Language(s) can function as a vehicle for truth, but can also be more like a child's playful arrangement and destruction and rearrangement of a set of toys, and sometimes the two modes overlap significantly.
Playing with assumptions of climate change is not the same as ignorant denial.
44
I’ll miss Freeman Dyson’s insightful essays in the New York review of books.
15
Dyson enriched the lives of millions. His recent essay on Fritz Zwicky (NYRoB 16 Jan 2020) is a gem.
It’s high time architects paid attention to falls and injuries due to falls. Must all our floors be hard as rock? Can’t more of our furniture be beveled and free of points?
28
I know of Freeman Dyson just from having read The Starship and the Canoe. Picked up in a used bookshop for no particular reason, it's quite a good read (and unconcernedly empty of math), covering Dyson's space exploration dreams but with a whole counterculture thing about his son, also a gifted person (maybe not his dad's level). Son designs and builds kayaks in the book, that's the "canoe" of the title. There's a part I remember pretty clearly. Author asks Freeman Dyson (more seriously than jokingly), So, how come you're so smart? Dyson looks at him, then: The real question is, why is everyone so dumb?
15
I would have liked to know him. On climate change, however, he was bonkers.
14
@Charlie Miller He wasn’t bonkers, just skeptical that humans could make intelligent decisions based on accurate predictions.
17
His denial of climate change will always tarnish an otherwise brilliant life.
12
@Imperato Dyson was not a climate-change denier. He was skeptical concerning some of the effects of climate change. He was aware that the negative effects of climate change will not be felt uniformly around the globe, and that riled the fanatics and absolutists.
29
@David Illig
Thanks for explaining succinctly Dyson’s views on climate change, which were much more skeptical, not of climate change, but of whether we could ever make accurate predictions about the future. There was a vast distance between climate change deniers and his position.
Dyson was truly an original thinker who left me awestruck.
39
@David Illig Dyson said that climate change was not an urgent problem and could be met with technology. If that's not denial I do not know what is. Yes all climate scientists are aware that projections are not exact: we don't know if we will reach a tipping point in five years or ten or twenty. To say that we can wait to find a solution is like saying that we know the bridge has collapsed but let's keep going along this road apace until our feet are wet. Yes there will be portions of the globe (a northwest passage at last?) which might benefit from climate change but they will be few and minimal compared to the gross negative effects.
34
Isn’t the uninverse wonderful that can produce a mind like this.
22
In 1989, my family and I saw Freeman Dyson deliver the prestigious morning lecture in the Amphitheater at the Chautauqua Institution, the esteemed cultural/intellectual summer retreat. I was in college at the time, saying with my parents for the week. Whee we arrived back at our hotel room for lunch with my father, my mother greeted us with “What did you do?” My father replied, “What do you mean?” To which she explained, “Freeman Dyson just called to say he’d be joined us for dinner.” Trust me - I am not being modest when I say we were nobody. There was no reason for him to have dinner with us. My father, we would soon learn, was experiencing bouts of manic depression. In his current manic phase he had after the speech left Dyson a note at this lodging introducing himself (a pediatrician from Long Island), saying he wanted to invite him out to dinner, at the famous Atheneum Hotel, along with… and my father then listed every other famous person on the grounds that week (Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a famous journalist, and others). ...
49
So now that he had RSVPed yes my parents went into overdrive contacting all the intellectuals of Chautauqua, trying to secure them at the last minute, with an invitation from a stranger, to diner with us and Freeman Dyson. Not one was available. My mother was mortified that we were going to have a fancy dinner with this celebrity on our own, with none of our promised fellow celebrities. We met Dyson at the hotel. He wore a jacket (as still required back in the day) and he could not have been more delightful nor delighted. My father, as he had shared in his letter, had gone into practice after a brief stint at the Center for Disease Control, where he worked under D. A. Henderson, right before making history directing a 10-year international effort that eradicated smallpox throughout the world. Dyson didn’t want to come mingle with the celebrities of Chautauqua - he just wanted to meet with someone who could share with him what it was like to work with one of his heroes. It is a night I will never forget.
62
A man who doubts climate change is not a man I care to respect.
3
@Gordon Dyson didn’t doubt climate change, but like any good scientist, he was highly skeptical about many perceived truths. He put those truths to the test, and if he found them wanting, he described in detail the problems he had with certain ideas.
Dyson didn’t doubt that climate change was happening, only that humans, with our limited knowledge, could make informed and useful decisions.
17
@Gordon
Well Gordon - give him an ear. Climate. Change might be humankind's biggest challenge and although I do share your concern, we need many intelligent voices in the conversation.
7
But did he invent that vacuum cleaner or not?
14
I'm no physicist but I've followed Dyson's work in The NY Review of Books.
Thank you for this fascinating, informative obituary.
7
What science subjects have a consensus?
Atomic physics? Biology of human sexes? Information theory? Computer science?
2
@areader NYT gives me only 1500 characters to respond but let's start with mathematics, the nature of the solar system, Einstein's explanations of how space and time are related, the basis (but not all the details) of Darwin's theory of evolution, the structure of DNA and fullerenes - I could go on. And the general shape of climate change theory is well understood by most scientists. It will be interesting to see the science-led reaction to coronavirus because even those who normally dismiss science will, in the end, listen to those who actually know what they are talking about.
16
I don't know about Dyson's children with his second wife but his two with his first are an argument against affirmative action. Dyson's first wife was a professor at Berkeley as was Freeman Dyson. Dyson's son has written brilliant books including one on Turing . His daughter made millions by starting a search engine in Russia. If your gene pool is Freeman Dyson and his wife you are likely to be way above average
9
Mr. Dyson.
5
Surely "scientist" rather than "technologist" would be a much better description of his work...
2
No global warming? I'm glad "Dr." Dyson got to live a good, long, brilliant life without peril...
2
Inspiring!
I love his vacuums
7
What an amazing person and amazing life.
1
Contrarian's contrarian!
2
R.I.P.
1
Re: “The Starship and the Canoe,” by John McPhee.” Perhaps you meant Kenneth Brower as the author?
1
Brilliant, fascinating individual. Also typically British/English eccentricity.
4
Some 10 or so year ago, I went to a lecture given by Mr Dyson. Being an engineer and someone who follows science in most forms I was looking forward to the talk, and what I was expecting to be a thought - provoking physics discussion. Instead I found a droning, less than inspiring talk about I don't remember what.
I probably should have never gone to the lecture as what it did was bias my opinion of him, to the point of all I can do is consider him a bit of a wing-nut.
That said, my condolences.
9
Such thinkers motivate each other. Little slows them. They just power along, oblivious to self doubt or the logic of others. Einstein credited his imagination. James Franck credited his fascination with things and his conscience. He failed as a law student, thank God. The Manhattan Project was his baby. He and Fermi ran it. By
Such people think all the time. They multi process. They cannot put something down. And when they fail, we get silence. Franck failed on photosynthesis. He worked it for twenty years.
The Frank Report was signed by many scientists.
Guess.
2
Freeman Dyson is going to be missed especially by people who love science but could not get their PhD. He proved that a scientist is someone who does science and not someone who is knighted with honors by a college or the king of Sweden. He was pragmatic enough to take the Temptation foundation's money and he was more deserving of a Nobel prize than most. Accepting the Templeton prize was likely a nonstarter for the Nobel committee. That makes him the ultimate iconoclast.
“Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all. . ."
40
@PictureBook: And yet, Dr. Dyson was "knighted with honors" many times over, and seemed to relish in the festivities. He seems the type of scientist/philosopher that is more common than assumed; he developed unique papers and thoughts, based on theories begun by others...just as a great many intelligent and above-average mathematicians do. A rare breed, perhaps; but not so much a singular individual. He created ideas from formulas that were sometimes right, sometimes off the mark, but did retain his individuality.
3
Dyson was a climate denier. Dressed up or not, climate denial is still climate denial. The great and lasting damage he and other deniers have done to humanity's collective future will be his, and their, enduring legacy.
4
@Peter Kalmus
I believe in climate change but this person clearly had a brilliant mind and advanced the sciences so let's just cheer that for now.
19
Scientists who popularize science for the masses like Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, etc.are a great gift performing a mighty human service.
Polymath Renaissance men like Leonardo Da Vinci are blessings.
18
When I was a poor student in India, I wrote a letter to Freeman Dyson informing him that his books were priced out of my reach. I did not expect that he would write back to me. Imagine my utter surprise, when I received by mail a copy of his latest book, ‘ Infinite in all directions’ with a personal note from him. Such was his kindness!
145
To get a feel for what genius is - a term that has been depreciated recently - take a look at the book "QED and the men who made it: Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga." These men were real geniuses.
12
When I was a graduate student in Australia I attended a summer school in Canberra at which many of the leading atomic physicists of the time gave lectures, including Freeman Dyson. On a number of occasions I found myself drinking with him after the lectures. I remember one occasion when I asked him a question to which he did not know the answer. He could have given some complicated answer that would have gone over my head. However, he looked directly at me and said “ I don’t know”. This made an enormous impression on me and throughout my career I was never again ashamed to admit “I don’t know”, or to ask questions to which I thought I should have known the answer.
Graeme Lister
87
As said by many eloquently, Dyson was a gem of humanity. What a blessing. Am curious what did Dyson think of “the next”, after this life is snuffed? He presumably contemplated this. What do we take away?
5
Sad that he is gone. A great physicist and a deep thinker. Among other things I’ve read many of his essays in the New York Review of Books—many of which he collected and republished in books. Reading any of his essays is well worth your time!
6
I had thought it was physicist Ted Taylor who advanced the idea of powering spaceships with nuclear explosions, as detailed in John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy."
@Archer
Dyson elucidated the mathematical theory of ablation that governed how such a ship would work. It’s mentioned in “The Starship and the Canoe”.
2
@Archer Dyson worked out the theory of “ablations” that describes how it could work.
1
Feynman said that scientists who leave universities don't accomplish nearly as much as those who stay in them . What did Einstein do in Princeton?
I wonder how the fall caused his death . My biochem professor said that many old people fracture their weak bones and then fall as opposed to falling and them breaking bones. .
3
This was a person who took the suggestion seriously, "Think outside of the box." Rightly or wrongly, he wasn't afraid to be a contrarian; that was part of his genius. We need people like Dr. Dyson as a check and balance on "Groupthink."
12
A legend has passed away. We need more wide-ranging, brilliant, searching, inventive, icon-smashing minds now more than ever as the problems facing humanity become increasingly complex and our best thinkers become increasing siloed in their specialties.
Freeman Dyson, I bow to your intellectual curiosity and adventurousness. You remained, indeed, a free man till the end.
9
For many people, the concept of a Dyson Sphere was first introduced to the public in 1992, in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 6, Episode 4.
1
@Scott - oddly enough, the actual concept of the Dyson Sphere was something he picked up from a 1937 science fiction work "Star Maker" by Olaf Stapledon.
That was news to me until just now - I was going to recommend Niven's "Ringworld" for anyone liking the Dyson Sphere approach.
I dug a few seconds more and found the reference to Stapledon on Wikipedia and it linked to an interview with Dyson - an interesting discussion with a great mind and worth reading the entire thing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140109033551/http://meaningoflife.tv/transcript.php?speaker=dyson
"Wright: Oh yes. Yes in fact just based on secondary accounts, I had imagined some giant sphere whose function was to capture all of the energy of the sun so that none would go to waste. Is that completely erroneous?
Freeman Dyson: Well except it shouldn't be a sphere of course...
Wright: Right.
Freeman Dyson: ... it should have been but I imagined in fact a swarm of objects surrounding a star I mean that that would be the way to use all the starlight and and and so it would look essentially from the outside rather like a dust cloud and actually this was invented not by me but by Olef Stapleton the science-fiction writer who wrote in the 1930s. So if you really wanted to give a name to it it should be the Stapleton sphere rather than the Dyson sphere...
Wright: I think it's too late to make that change I'm afraid your legacy is is inextricably intertwined.
Freeman Dyson: I'm sort of stuck with it."
10
@Scott
Whoa, that's really cool. Never heard of that.
2
Dyson was a giant, a genius across many fields. There is no one like him in the world today. RIP.
3
An idle question: Is there a mathematical equation for the pattern in the jacket Dyson is shown wearing in the photo from 1972? Also an idle observation: It's a pity the photo doesn't give us a look at the waistcoat under the jacket and the tie that does with it!
6
RIP Freeman Dyson. I will always admire that I could forever turn to your high insight of Julius Robert Oppenheimer and why we did what we did on the desolate sands of Jornada del Muerto in July of 1945. Your first-hand knowledge of the goings-on during the Manhattan Project has been appreciated and admired throughout my lifetime of studying history. Thank you, sir. and please send all regards to Oppie.
5
Dyson's view on climate was longer range than what climate scientist publish - his views were more those of a climate historian
On a short time scale - the next hundred years - climate scientist are correct. Global warming will increase
However, climate history shows on the scale of 10 000 years the ice age will return - that is unless man made global warming interferes. For the data, see link below
Nor were Dyson's views unique. Svante Arrhenius motivation to write the first scientific paper on the effect of burning of coal on climate (1896) was his fear that the ice age might return and bury Sweden. Man made Carbonic Acid he hoped, would save it. ( And as an added benefit extend the growing season of Sweden) Walther Nernst, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1920) advocated the burning of coal seems for the same reason
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
6
@LArs Finally. Some sensible words about climate change. Most of all Dyson was probably saying, "Don't jump to conclusions." I read one blip by a scientist many years ago who said that the Earth does not contain enough fossil fuels for humans to cause irreparable harm. It's next to impossible to learn how to ride a bicycle in the middle of a bike race. Plus it's hard to see the big picture when so much fear (lack of understanding) is being expressed.
10
@Peter: Relying on a dismissive "blip" (actually a conclusion about a supposed conclusion) from some unnamed "scientist many years ago" who seemed to know just exactly the volume of fossil fuels contained in the earth, and to "know" at that time the extent of long-term damage the use of those fuels would cause is just a bit presumptuous...and totally off-the-wall foolish. Really, one should study and refer to more evolved and knowledgeable facts and the thinking around them, instead of blithely living in the past and relying on some unnamed "source" living on the fringe of knowledge...or the lack of such.
6
One of the highlights of my life was to spend five-or-six hours, one-on-one, with Dyson in the mid-80’s ... followed by many years of correspondence thereafter. He convinced me that the second law of thermodynamics is not an overwhelming obstacle to life evolving forever ... which freed me up to pursue my thoughts in that regard:
http://www.strugglesforexistence.com/?p=article_p&id=12
He was a GREAT teacher.
8
Wow! I did not know that Esther Dyson had a famous father!
I was in the audience of a presentation that Esther Dyson gave in the very early days of the web (back in 1995) on how people on the web will discuss their ideas only with people just like them, and as a result, get the very wrong impression that "everybody" agrees with them. Wise words that became more relevant as the web got bigger and bigger.
Dear Esther, may your father rest in peace.
21
It is too bad that a few retired scientists like Dyson have tried to raise doubt about the very clear science relating to climate.
They have contributed to slow action on the greatest threat humans have ever faced.
4
George Johnson has risen to the occasion with this sterling obituary, a profoundly moving snapshot of a special human.
8
He's the Hugh Trevor-Roper of physics, disappointing the hero worshippers with a peripatetic, polymath cast of mind, defying demands for the long form in favor of smaller works of undying cogency, even intimacy. The "Autobiography through Letters" is especially the parallel of Trevor-Roper's affectionate enthusiasms. This has been a lovely mentality, and it was exactly right of the Institute for Advanced Study to make way for him.
2
I was extremely fortunate to work with Professor Dyson on the vacuum cleaner. His "Cortoid spheres in random space" changed the way vacuums and quantum mechanics intersect and has resulted in a higher quality of life. RIP Dr. Dyson. I hardly knew ye.
3
If you'd like to hear more, there are many good interviews with Dr. Dyson on youtube.
2
Thank you, Freeman Dyson, for your inspiration, teaching, research and so much more.
It's so like Dyson to say what he did about climate change. Even when you didn't believe the evidence supported his ideas, you had to listen to him because he made you think. He was willing to go beyond the borders of what seemed to be the way things were and keep going and that's what made us love him.
5
Freeman Dyson possessed one of the greatest minds of the century and deserves a more comprehensive obituary. No scientist could duplicate his excellent writing, and I would highly recommend perusing his elegant work published by the New York Review of Books.
4
R.I.P. Freeman Dyson. He's gone to that great Dyson Sphere in the sky.
4
Here's what Dyson said about climate change earlier:
“[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.”
- Freeman Dyson, Yale Environment 360, June 4, 2009
http://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment
13
@David: So, using the inflammatory words "global warming propaganda" is not intolerant? Or it is acceptable to be intolerant when you are more "famous"?
Seems many of Dr. Dyson's advocates do not follow what is purported to be his strong point: dissent by looking at alternative ideas. Perhaps Dr. Dyson was a victim of bias, just as everyone else is...even those without honorary degrees.
3
My comment is motivated by this article referring to Dyson as “Dr. Dyson.”
Dyson was a genius; a visionary, theorist, and teacher--in the big picture sense of that concept. A gift to the world not just for math and science-related matters (no pun intended) but for the sake of a higher ideal--epistemology and knowledge. That was his intellectual-religion and he was a prophet of those most important values--truth, knowing, and what is knowable.
But he wasn’t a "Dr."--lacking an earned PhD, as the article notes, and he was proud of his accomplishments despite not having received a (true) PhD.
The importance of this, my objection to the article referring to him as Dr., is that doesn’t honor his self-definition, his pride in not having earned a doctorate.
Far more important, though, is that referring to him as “Dr.” falsely promotes the idea that to be a serious intellectual making important contributions, one must have a doctorate.
One can be a successful, important, significant, and even groundbreaking scholar and intellectual, and, most importantly, be a highly valuable public intellectual, without having a doctorate. Freeman Dyson is the example, par excellence, of that.
You simply need to be like Freeman Dyson: Serious, a truth-seeker, open-minded, a free-thinker, willing to challenge orthodoxy and authority, and committed above all to the principle of intellectual integrity.
Thanks Mr. Dyson, for being a good role-model.
14
The passage "Richard Feynman, a young professor at Cornell, had invented a novel method to describe the behavior of electrons and photons (and their antimatter equivalent, positrons)" incorrectly suggests that positrons are the antimatter equivalent of photons. They are anti-electrons. If "Dr. Dyson" took his lack of a Ph.D. as a badge of honor, why not refer to him (more correctly?) as Mr. Dyson?
3
We’ve lost another, I suspect the last, of the Great Thinkers who came of age trying to cope with dilemma of being the “good guys” working to save any kind of free world by winning WW II - with same, if not more horrible weapons as the “bad guys” ...
With luck, it will be the last time ethical, concerned scientists ever find themselves in such a bind - knowing they are racing to build more economical means of killing.
Dyson was even blinded by the great poisoning of the planet he planned to unleash, the crude run for the solar system Edward Teller kept calling for with the Orion project: thrust created by exploding nuclear bombs behind crude pusher plates beneath a huge traditionally shaped rocket.
Dyson was involved in many plans to save the planet, with projects including CO2-stripping genetically tailored trees that would potentially turn the waste from burning petrochemicals into a renewable resource.
And with both nature and nurture, he passed on his desires and conflicts between the advantages and dangers of powerful technology to incredible children. Through his writing, he passed them on to the world.
I still wish to meet the culture that finds itself in need of all its sun’s output, and manages to capture it with a Dyson sphere.
1
My anecdote: I attended one of his lectures as an undergraduate, when people still thought digital watches were a good idea. Professor Dyson checked his during the lecture, and noted with surprise that it said the time was zero. He dismissed this as a normalization issue. (Physics joke). But it occurred to me that if Freeman Dyson’s watch said zero, maybe the time really was zero.
10
Freeman Dyson was a great scientist, an eloquent writer, and a wonderful human being. I named by second child after him.
But Freeman Dyson just loved being a contrarian, and this could lead him to take a position not on the basis of reason or evidence, but just on the basis of bucking a trend. I listened to his after-dinner talk about science education at the Gibbs Symposium, Yale University, May 1989. He started by admitting he knew very little about science education. Then he gave a wonderful talk about how science education should be done, in his opinion. His opinions were charming but heterodox, to say the least. During the question period, some of us who actually were science educators pointed out flaws in this position. He admitted the flaws, saying he just wanted to toss out a few harmless opinions.
His opinions on climate change were of exactly the same sort: based not on fact, nor reason, nor evidence, but on a desire to be unorthodox.
9
I'm another one of many, many people who loved and admired Dr Freeman Dyson.
He didn't have a doctorate but people called him Doctor Dyson anyway.
He is among the many great minds who have ever lived and contributed to the advancement and betterment of human society.
He will be remembered for a very long time to come.
RIP Freeman Dyson
4
A truly fabulous man with a uniquely creative imagination. He probably should have received more than one Nobel Prize for his many contributions to physics. RIP Freeman Dyson.
6
I'm not a scientist, but I've followed scientific progress for most of my life. Until a few years ago. I'm now convinced that the neolithic revolution, our adoption of settled farming, was such a huge disaster that only now are we coming to realize its extent. As foragers we were free & suddenly became slaves to a few chiefs & their enablers, like all the famous men of science, right down to Dyeson.
2
A wonderful man who thought, spoke and wrote clearly. In the many times I was lucky to attend his talks and lectures, I marveled at his modesty, clarity and youthful exuberance.
He lived a long and wonderful life. He gave us a lot. We will cherish his memory and persona.
May he Rest In Peace.
9
Late to the party, A Many Colored Glass (2007) was my introduction. It was wonderfully uplifting and idealistic, and seemed to have come from a different time and place.
3
Unlike the alleged geniuses of contemporary Silicon Valley and Wall Street, Mr. Dyson belonged to a kinder, gentler age when ability and genius flowered alongside modesty, knowledge with character and an abiding absence of crass commercialism.
May his tribe increase.
20
The truly great thing that Dyson showed is that you don't have to sign up to the ever-more specialization that human beings are expected to take. You can spend a lifetime learning the maths and then developing to become an expert at, say, string theory - and nothing else. He said no - and of course, had the mental equipment to do it.
Doing what you're interested in, especially if that interest changes, is a great way to be fulfilled. They used to be called "Renaissance men".
15
I have been obsessed with the idea of Dyson spheres for a long time. A very interesting thinker and great physicist.
5
Thank you, Nee York Times, for providing a glimpse into the brilliance of his mind. I get a sense of the vastly beautiful and humane view he held of the universe, and it is truly inspiring.
17
I was first introduced to Freeman Dyson in 1981 through his book, "Disturbing the Universe". It was a thought provoking read about his own life growing up, experiences with Oppenheimer, TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, and clever thought experiments that stretched the imagination. He was a giant in so many ways although I admit to not being a supporter of his position on climate change (denial). He will be missed.
8
I thought it was uncontroversial to point out that anthropogenic global warming is likely to prevent the next ice age that our planet was destined for. The Holocene climate optimum was thousands of years ago.
7
I got to know Freeman as Esther's father. I loved talking with him because he would never hesitant to tell me I was wrong but would continue talking, nevertheless.
In addition to all his accomplishments described so well in the obit and here, he should be remembered for producing George and Esther with his first wife Verena, a gene pool that always left me gob-smacked whenever talking to any of them.
I share a small part of his wife Imme's and the whole family's and world's loss.
31
@Bill Kutik I recall he loved talking about his son playing music to whales while in his kayak.
4
I'm a doctor, but without a PhD. in Physics. Although I did well in the subject, particularly the modern stuff while taking required classes as a bioengineering major at Columbia University.
No doubt Freeman Dyson was a genius. But it seems to me if you dismantled Jupiter, the disruption of gravitational forces from the most massive planet in our solar system would prove calamitous. We'd probably drift more quickly towards the sun without Jupiter's pull to counter that of our star energy provider. Could the Earth's axis tilt? What would happen to the asteroid belt, kept relatively stable between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter?
Feynman's books explaining QED are a masterpiece of a Nobel laureate explaining sublime topics in language that's suitable for the unwashed plebes, although some background in science helps oodles. (Unlike our administration's bungled attempt at managing the Covid-19 pandemic. And it's a pandemic alright, the WHO is always a day late and a dollar short.)
His life just goes to show that the brightest of the luminosities aren't exempt from quackery.
19
You’re right about Feynman. Dyson was definitely wrong about some things. I am reminded of Fred Hoyle, the great astrophysicist who coined the term “Big Bang” as an insult because he preferred the steady state theory. Or the great chemist Linus Pauling being obsessed with vitamin C as a cure all. Isaac Newton was obsessed with alchemy and obscure metaphysics. Great minds sometimes latch onto bad ideas.
19
@Ignatius J. Reilly says that "But it seems to me if you dismantled Jupiter, the disruption of gravitational forces from the most massive planet in our solar system would prove calamitous."
In fact the dismantling of Jupiter into a Dyson sphere would make Earth's orbit more stable, not less. This is not a difficult calculation, although it would prove easier for Dyson than it would for me.
3
@Ignatius J. Reilly
As a bioengineering major, you most likely took an undergrad course in physics. The intro level texts have at least one chapter on gravitation. All of your solar-system questions can be answered with the information in that chapter. The short answer: Dyson knew what he was talking/writing about.
2
@Kris Pister — Great story, showcasing his deep thinking, and penchant form provocative thought. But it be interesting to hear if you followed up by asking a cosmologist the same question.
1
Brilliance, scientific productivity, humanity aside, any academic who could not only get away with that sartorial touch, but revel in the presentation, richly deserves full marks. Dr. D seems to have trimmed the panache with age, though the distinctive touches remain, with the exception of the 1963 photo.
It's a mark of an individual at one with his place in the universe.
11
Dyson makes me proud to be an academic dilettante--in the best way. I don't want to spend years studying an esoteric topic. His insatiable appetite for knowledge represents what a great education is. His dismissal of the Nobel for QED demonstrates humility often lacking in a system that prioritizes citations and awards. He wasn't known for the eccentricities like Feynman, but I think he was okay with that. I hope I can have his exuberance, curiosity in science, zest for asking difficult questions, and confidence in myself. Thank you, Mr. Dyson.
24
@Randeep Chauhan
No, but he was notorious for his climate denialism.
Would that his humility countered his presumptuous disregard of earth & atmospheric & ecological fellow scientists who while not as abstractly brilliant or fantastically taken by science fiction as he, have taken a far truer measure of our planet's rising temperature & humankind's darkening fate. DF misused his reputation and intellect to undermine climate scientists' warnings rather than advance the science or search for solutions. Perhaps in his religious afterlife on Jupiter he will come to feel remorse for this further moral failure as he watches earthlings struggle with the consequences of the denialism he stoked.
2
Or have the last laugh as temperatures rise gently (not catastrophically) over the coming centuries...
2
Reading his works in the NY Review of Books made my life better. He was interesting, testy, and so serious, which made him a fun read. He did his part on this planet, rest in peace.
26
An interesting person Dyson. I admire what he accomplished, but was disappointed by his stance on anthropogenic climate change. He should have been a voice for appropriate action.
20
@glennmr - agreed. The problem when someone that prominent decides to be the iconoclast is, sure he doubted "the models", but did he ever explain how the ice was melting anyway?
Observation, physics and models all point the same way. He voiced doubts about one of the three - showing that even great minds don't get it all right.
And, of course, it also brings to mind this xkcd classic about physicists. https://xkcd.com/793/
6
@glennmr Freeman was wrong about this, I believe, but we should cherish intelligent contrarians and outlying thinkers who challenge a consensus and force it to defend itself more rigorously.
13
@glennmr
I guess you haven't considered the arguments of Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giavier , scientist Don Easterbrook or thousands of others.There are many surveys that show that most scientists don't believe global warming in man made . The oft quoted 97% of scientists believe in man made global warming is occurring is based on a survey that threw out the questionaires of almost all of respondents and used only 77 of them .
Warming hasn't accelerated since the industrial revolution
7
What a brilliant and eclectic mind!!
His New York Review of Books essays are fantastic! As are his video talks on Edge.
12
For insight into this brilliantly eccentric family, "The Starship and The Canoe" by John McPhee.
Son George escaped his father's gravitational pull by moving west and up the Inside Passage on a barge full of farm equipment. He became interested in native kayaks before sea kayaking was a popular recreational sport. He developed a design using polyester fabric stretched over an alloy aluminum pipe frame, with characteristics closer to native kayaks than today's hard shell boats.
His Inside Passage adventures led him eventually to a northern Vancouver Island orca research station. The book describes a powerful reunion with his famous father at the station.
An excellent account by writer Brower, son of David.
10
@Look Ahead That's Brower, not McPhee.
@Look Ahead
In that story browwer claims ( wrongly) that today's republican party has nothing in common with Abe Lincoln's .
This lovely memorial implicitly calls for someone to draw all of the diversity of Dyson’s musing into some sense of ultimate cohering.
Dyson’s capaciousness monumentally exemplifies creative intelligence at its most interested.
For the universe to unfold in a way that is as interesting as possible, there must be the interest that the universe evolves to, in a sense, witness evolving. Intelligence in the universe so far only shows up here, for we beings who mis-imagined that heaven as someplace else.
Dyson hallmarks Heidegger's notion of the 1960s—proffering "planetary thinking" years before the first Earth Day—that we are "shepherds of Earth" that must regard leading intelligence as a sacred gift.
10
During their education, physicists become aware that to others, physics is "hard." For many, that leads to a feeling of superiority, that I am the better scientist, that my interpretation of something distant from my speciality is better than an expert's. Hence Rutherford's "Science is either physics or stamp collecting."
So Dyson always challenged global warming. In this he was no different from those other merchants of doubt, Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Bill Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow, physicists all. While he was not nearly as obnoxious as those gentlemen, there is no question that Dyson's complaints provided comfort and political cover to big oil. While his scepticism originated from his jaundiced view of mathematical models, the fact is that some models really do provide useful insight, especially if they are simple. The inevitability of global warming from CO2 rise was shown convincingly in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, using a conceptually simple model well supported by the observations. One wonders if Dyson dismissed Arrhenius as "only a chemist."
84
@naruroa ".. leads to a feeling of superiority..." Scientists need to exercise humility when commenting on matters outside their specialty - which unfortunately Dyson did not do. Dyson's comments on climate change were categorical and dismissive. A balanced account of Dyson's life has to contend with this lack of caution regarding the existential threat to life on this planet.
A counter-example would be Francis Crick, who immersed himself in neuroscience late in life and actually made it a second career.
11
@naruroa
If I heat my coke CO2 is released . If I release CO2 does a nearby coke bottle heat up
@naruroa As Freeman himself used to say, a nasty obit is a sign that you mattered. Perhaps your comment is still too polite!
16
This article and the comments were so interesting. Obviously a rare intellect and deeply humane man. The world will miss him. One comment in the article was especially interesting to me. I am a strong believer in climate change and global warming, and also that humans and our use of carbon have contributed to it. It is o.k. that he was not so sure of this ,(if I read the article correctly) as it seems that he was not a “denier” either. My view on this, and I would wager the view of many, is a result of reading the opinions of others, who are far smarter than I am, and who seem to be in the great majority. But I totally agree with him on one issue. Climate change may be an existential threat, or present reality, but an emphasis on this threat and neglecting the other, certain reality that we are presently paving over our natural world - with the accompany loss of birds and insects and other species - is a tragic, , also existential threat. Wind power that kills bird and bat populations is not a good thing. The only solution to these problems is to halt the population growth and development which is destroying the natural world.
46
@Wan -- the problem with the argument that "only solution" is population is you are advocating doing nothing about many many significant problems that are exacerbated, but not caused exactly by, growing population.
The rate of population growth peaked in 1960. People live decades, so you saying "halt population growth" is an empty slogan when facing real problems caused by the people already here.
And we don't have the luxury of focusing on one issue anyway - never have. So consider that decarbonizing our global economy does the following:
- ends CO2 contributions that destabilize nature
- ends particulate pollution that harms us and nature
- ends demand for fracking water, and pollution from produced water from fracking wells
- ends creation of airborne and waterborne pollutants from combustion, from coal ash etc.
Fighting climate change deals with multiple ills at once.
18
@b fagan Thank you for your comment. As I stated, I am a believer in combatting climate change aka global warming.But to your point, at least in the United States in the 1970’s the birth rate among the native population had reached a replacement level. However, driven by immigration, our population has more than doubled, increasing from around 150 million in the 1940’s and 1950’s to over 320 million today. Perhaps my use of “the only solution to these problems” was slightly simplistic ; nevertheless, I strongly believe that population increase and development are a current problem and are in tandem destroying the world which we love. I am sure that you have read the articles in the Times (I think both within the past year) describing the dramatic decline in bird and insect populations. Some of this may be because of the misuse of pesticides, but clearly much is driven by loss of habitat. I personally shudder when I see a new housing development or shopping center or road being built. Those who consider themselves environmentalists and who think of climate change as being uniquely important are seriously mistaken, in my view.
14
@Wan - I agree about development, and think we have to also gove thought to changing farming practices to avoid the edge-to-edge cropping and use of neonicotinids that are a double whammy to plants and animals that are being pushed out.
We also need to adopt a more concentrated footprint for living - denser areas with less dependence on cars so we can return some of the land to the rest of the biosphere.
For population, the only effective thing we in the US can do is fight back against the suppression of support for family planning education, birth control and public health internationally. The far right is hurting those projects and preventing the US from being a bigger help.
And we still need immigrants right now, as society learns how to shift from a growth-required economy to a less wasteful economy that would even let future members of society do well while populations settle back down.
5
I once asked Freeman about the energy lost by a photon due to red-shift as it crosses the universe. Where does the energy go, I asked? There are many facile answers to this question, but Freeman said nothing and simply stared off into space thinking. This went on for several minutes, and I began to wonder if he had not heard me, or perhaps dozed off - he was in his 90s at the time. Just as I was about to give up he said "At a large scale, the universe doesn't care about conservation of energy", gave me one of his little smiles with a twinkle in his eye, left my office, and left me with my mind blown. And of course, he's right.
Freeman was a wonderful human being - one of my very favorite members of the species. I will miss him deeply.
180
It's no accident that his father was a composer, that Einstein played the violin (badly), and postulated his theory of light while walking in Tuscany, as opposed to some fluorescent lit room.
The questions for humanity go beyond mere technological achievement, and enter the world of philosophy and ethics.
Our applied scientists and technologists are the ones who have produced our toxic stew. How we educate our elites is vital for our survival.
24
I never met him, but I read his books and followed his career. I will miss him terribly.
Godspeed, Freeman. You’re part of that universe you studied so well.
Condolences to his family, talented as well.
29
I was lucky enough to talk to Dyson once, almost 40 years ago, when I was an undergraduate. He told me something that stuck with me ever afterwards, and which I pass on to my students: "I did some of my best work when I didn't really know what I was doing."
I probably don't remember exactly the way he said it, although I later found an article with a similar quote, and it's true that Dyson's ignorance is far better informed than most people's expertise. But for students, such as I was, who feared they could never match the knowledge of the great scientists, his quote helps instill permission to explore new ideas nonetheless.
150
I have seen some of his talks in youtube, and read some of his thoughts and opinions on various issues.
He was brilliant.
Time to watch and read some of his lectures back.
A weekend well spent.
11
As mentioned, he had proposed that "Dyson Civilizations" in which the output of a Sun is captured to power civilizations in the most efficient way via sunlight. In more detail, he thought this proposal would explain the observational discovery that such stars emits most of their energy in the infrared. The solution turned out to be older, cooler versions of the Sun which are truly a phase in the lives of solar type stars late in their lives. So no such civilizations were discovered, so far.
7
His love of unbound imagination fueled my thirst to think outside the box, and pushed me to try moving the box for others.
11
"Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might forestall another ice age."
Those things are true, but they are only a small part of a larger story. The whole story is quite different from just their part of it, like an elephant is more than its tail.
Still, we should no more deny these small parts than we should deny the larger parts.
Look to ways to use this. Excess CO2 recovered from whatever sources could be used in greenhouses to increase crop growth, so it is not entirely waste to be pumped underground at high cost.
While we face global warming, we could in fact make such a mess of our "correction" that we kick things into global cooling in a miscalculated geo-engineering effort.
In fact, too much warming that shuts down the Arctic cold source of the Atlantic current heat conveyor could itself inspire glaciation. Too much warm could produce too much cold soon after, even if we don't do an over-correction ourselves in some miscalculated geo-engineering effort.
These are useful warnings, even if they do deny the bigger part of the story we need to understand today. Denial of any parts of the truth is ultimately dangerous.
18
@Mark Thomason Fair point regarding the concept of the truth. However, I don't think we really need to worry ourselves too much about "overcorrecting" for global warming in any geo-engineering efforts -- we're doing a pretty bad job at slowing the rate of warming as we continue to pump more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the technology for actually removing this from the atmosphere is largely inefficient or non-existent. Maybe someday that will all be different, but slowing down our current (measly) progress against global warming out of fears of causing "global cooling" would be weakening our response to an urgent, massive issue out of fears of an unrealistic, hypothetical one.
11
@Jan -- True, but if we are to have any hope we'll need to get going on some major ideas for geo-engineering, and when we do we'd best be more careful than we have been to date.
3
@Mark Thomason -- Since the 1980's, the Spanish coastal plain near the city of Almeria has been turned into solid greenhouses, made of plastic sheeting. It is the EU's Imperial Valley, growing a large proportion of the vegetables for the Continent.
Such an extensive, industrial scale use of greenhouses carpeting a region is how I mean CO2 could be introduced to improve plant growth.
It is already happening. This would just be an improvement in current methods.
America has nothing like this, but the rest of the world is moving on.
4
He was a wonderful man and tremendous intellect who I had the privilege of knowing for ten years. Till the very end he embodied unquenchable curiosity, and in our last email exchange only a month ago he asked me what the latest research in biochemistry was.
Most importantly, even beyond his groundbreaking contributions to a vast arena of science and scientific writing, he was a wonderful friend and family man and never tired of telling stories about his six children and sixteen grandchildren. RIP to a once in a lifetime intellect and beautiful human being.
99
"I was lucky to be introduced to science at school as a subversive activity of the younger boys. We organized the Science Society as an act of rebellion against compulsory Latin and compulsory football. We should try to introduce our children to science today as a rebellion against poverty and ugliness and militarism and economic injustice."
135
@Frank What a lovely post! I could not agree more!
7
@Frank Science is an even more subversive activity for girls, you know.
22
Dyson also entered the world of TV via Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode “Relics,” in which the crew encounters a Dyson sphere. Jimmy Doohan guest-stars as Scotty.
57
Here's a story about Dyson I heard from the director of the little research nuclear reactor at Reed College in Oregon. The director was giving a tour of the reactor to a group that included Dyson. He didn't know who Dyson was at the time. Near the end of the tour, the director remarked that Dyson's questions were incredibly detailed and showed great understanding of nuclear reactors. Dyson responded that he should know a bit about this reactor since he designed it. The director exclaimed, "You should be giving the tour." To which Dyson replied, "Oh no, this is the first time I've actually seen one."
225
Dr. Dyson was a visionary and an astonishing original thinker. I first encountered the Dyson integral in grad school, where the upper limit of integration is itself another integral, and I remember thinking, "Wow, this is the mark of a really nimble and unconventional mind." It gave me joy to see it.
32
Dyson was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He will be missed dearly. There are many wonderful YouTube videos featuring him on many issues such as science and religion, war and peace and many other topics, a rare philosopher scientist.
34
Even though at some point he did challenge the science on climate change, (which is not to be confused with denial),one of the points he was trying to make was that no solution to a problem ever arose from hysteria, which is a concept that will never go out of style.
193
@joel strayer Do you wish to characterize, for example NATURE of SCIENCE as pantheons of "hysteria"? Dyson, brilliant and humane as he may have been was not right about everything. In my opinion, he got anthropogenic global warming wrong. For example, Australia's fires were predicted by climate models, but projected for the end of the 21st century. Dyson was not an ecologist, no matter how he described himself.
14
I wish I knew about him earlier . There are a few questions I would have liked to have asked him.
11
He was one of the few people still questioning the morality of war- though I wish he wasn’t so pragmatic about military money.
7
One of the last of the great mad scientists, and one of my heroes. Godspeed, Freeman Dyson.
56
A great man, whom I knew for 47 years; my last (email) correspondence with him was exactly 30 days ago. He preserved his wit, undiminished, to the end. Definitely idiosyncratic---I found his opinion of Churchill bizarre---but that's often the price of genius.
109
@Jonathan Katz What wonderful correspondence that must have been! I've enjoyed his writing since my dad (a civil servant with quite eclectic interests and hobbies) offered me his copy of Disturbing the Universe. I think my dad -- who had the heart of a rebel and intellectual while working his way from working class to middle class - deeply appreciated Dyson's expansive views and clear writing.
But a question -- what was Dyson's opinion of Churchill? I've searched a bit online, but haven't found much.
41
@Jonathan Katz You are very lucky to have corresponded with him. An active mind such as his must have been very stimulating to you and, enjoyable as well. Is there a reference to his feelings on Churchill? I would love to read it. He truly was a beautiful mind.
3
@Nico
It is likely his review of Graham Farmelo's book, Churchill's Bomb
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/04/24/churchill-love-and-the-bomb/
4
Dr. Dyson was a classical or should I say quantum example of a genius who could think out of the box. Equally important, he was one of the earlier theoretical physicists and mathematicians who made quantum mechanics accessible to the lay public.
Our species needs more men and women of his caliber.
58
Dr. Dyson was indeed an iconoclast... a brilliant thinker, but also a tinkerer with ideas, and an inherent questioner, unafraid to go against the grain. He had grand visions about how life could populate the universe, and what forms it could possibly take. A marvelous, original mind.
94
@PT I just want that jacket.
8