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'Freeman John Dyson' FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, solid-state physics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his serious theorizing in futurism and science fiction concepts, including the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism and a proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.[1]
Biography
Personal
Dyson has six children. One daughter is Esther Dyson, the noted digital technology consultant. His son is the historian of technology George Dyson, one of whose books is ''Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965''. His wife, Imme Dyson, is an accomplished masters runner. Dyson's father was the renowned English composer George Dyson. Despite sharing a last name, he is not related to early 20th-century astronomer Frank Watson Dyson. However, as a small boy, Freeman Dyson was aware of Frank Watson Dyson; Freeman credits the popularity of someone with the same last name with inadvertently helping to spark his interest in science. Dyson received a Sc.D. from Bates College in 1990.
On Esther Dyson, his daughter:
Career
Dyson worked as an analyst for RAF Bomber Command during World War II.[2] After the war, he obtained a BA in mathematics from Cambridge University (1945) and was a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1946 to 1949. In 1947 he moved to the US, on a fellowship at Cornell University and then joined the faculty there as a physics professor in 1951 without a PhD. He was elected a FRS in 1952[3] In 1953, he took up a post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. In 1957, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Prof. Dyson is best known for demonstrating in 1949 the equivalence of the formulations of quantum electrodynamics that existed by that time -- Richard Feynman's diagrammatic path integral formulation and the operator method developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. A byproduct of that demonstration was the invention of the Dyson series[4].
Another seminal work by Dyson came in 1966 when, together with A. Lenard and independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, he proved rigorously that the exclusion principle plays the main role of stability of bulk matter [5]. Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between electrons and nuclei that is responsible for two wood blocks that are left on top of each other not coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macrosopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also did studies in the phase transition of the Ising model in 1 dimension and spin waves[6]
Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices [7].
From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but a treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons in space caused the project to be abandoned.
In 1958 he led the design team for the TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor used throughout the world in hospitals and universities for the production of isotopes.
In 1977, Dyson supervised Princeton undergraduate John Aristotle Phillips in a term paper that outlined a credible design for a nuclear weapon. This earned Phillips the nickname ''The A-Bomb Kid''.
Dyson has published a number of collections of speculations and observations about technology, science, and the future.
Dyson was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1966 and Max Planck medal in 1969. In the 1984–85 academic year he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, which resulted in the book ''Infinite In All Directions''.
In 1998, Dyson joined the board of the Solar Electric Light Fund. In 2000, Dyson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
In 1989, Dyson taught at Duke University as a Fritz London Memorial Lecturer.
As of 2003, Dyson is the president of the Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by Gerard K. O'Neill.
In 2003, Dyson was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado.
Dyson was a long time member of the JASON defense advisory group.
Concepts
Biotechnology and genetic engineering
Dyson cheerfully admits his record as a prophet is mixed, but "it is better to be wrong than to be vague."[8]
Dyson sphere
Main articles: Dyson sphere
In 1960 Dyson wrote a short paper for the journal Science, entitled "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation".[9] In it, he theorized that a technologically advanced society might completely surround its native star in order to maximize the capture of the star's available energy. Eventually, the civilization would completely enclose the star, intercepting electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from visible light downwards and radiating waste heat outwards as infrared radiation. Therefore, one method of searching for extraterrestrial civilizations would be to look for large objects radiating in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Dyson conceived that such structures would be clouds of asteroid-sized space habitats, though science fiction writers have preferred a solid structure: either way, such an artifact is often referred to as a Dyson sphere, although Dyson himself used the term "shell". Dyson says that he used the word "artificial biosphere" in the article meaning a habitat, not a shape.[10]
Dyson tree
Main articles: Dyson tree
Dyson has also proposed the creation of a ''Dyson tree'', a genetically-engineered plant capable of growing on a comet. He suggested that comets could be engineered to contain hollow spaces filled with a breathable atmosphere, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer solar system.
Space colonies
Freeman Dyson has been interested in space travel since he was a child, reading such science fiction classics as Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. As a young man, he worked for General Atomics on the nuclear-powered Orion spacecraft. He hoped Project Orion would put men on Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970. He's been unhappy for a quarter-century on how the government conducts space travel:
He still hopes for cheap space travel, but is resigned to waiting for private entrepreneurs to develop something new—and cheap.
Space exploration
Dyson's transform
Dyson also has some credits in Elementary number theory. His concept "Dyson's transform" led to one of the most important lemmas of Olivier Ramaré's theorem that every even integer is a sum of at most six primes.
Views
Criticism of global warming studies
Dyson was an early proponent of Carbon sequestration by plants by planting gigantic areas of trees in a paper as long ago as 1976.[11] He revisited this subject in 2007 where he asserted that the "fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated", having calculated that "the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology." The failures of climate scientists to understand this was due to his belief that "No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land."[12]
Dyson has questioned the predictive value of current computational models of climate change, urging instead more extensive use of local observations.
While he acknowledges climate change is in part due to anthropogenic causes, such as the burning of fossil fuels, he regards the term "global warming" as a misnomer:
Regarding political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change, Dyson argues that other global problems should take priority.
Bureaucracy
At the British Bomber Command, Dyson and colleagues proposed ripping out two gun turrets from the RAF Lancaster bombers, to cut the catastrophic losses to German fighters in the Battle of Berlin. A Lancaster without turrets could fly 50 mph faster and be much more maneuverable.
Warfare and weapons
On hearing the news of the bombing of Hiroshima:
The role of failure
On English academics
Science and Religion
Dyson strongly opposes reductionism. He is a non-denominational Christian and has attended various churches from Presbyterian to Roman Catholic. Regarding doctrinal or christological issues, he has said "I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology."[13]
Dyson disagrees with the famous remark by his fellow-physicist Steven Weinberg that "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things—that takes religion."[14]
Popular culture
The fictional character Gordon Freeman in the Half-Life franchise was named after Dyson.
As noted above, the Dyson sphere is a favorite of science-fiction authors. See Dyson spheres in fiction.
See also
★ The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll
★ A.I. Shlyakhter
★ Dyson's eternal intelligence
★ Astrochicken
★ Dyson tree
References
1. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
2. "A Failure of Intelligence", Essay in ''Technology Review'' (Nov–Dec 2006)
3. Royal Society directory entry
4. F. J. Dyson, ''Phys. Rev.'' '75', 486, 1736 (1949)
5. F. J. Dyson, A. Lenard, ''J. Math. Phys.'' '8', 3, 423-434 (1967); F. J. Dyson, A. Lenard, ''J. Math. Phys.'', '9', 5, 698-711 (1968); E. H. Lieb, W. Thirring, ''Phys. Rev. Lett.'' '35', 687-689 (1975).
6. See F. J. Dyson, E. H. Lieb, ''Selected papers by Freeman Dyson'', AMS (1996).
7. ''Ibid.''
8. Dyson, 1999, ''The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet''
9.
10. 20 minutes into a video
11. The Dyson Effect:
Carbon 'Offset' Forestry and The Privatization of the Atmosphere Larry Lohmann
12. heretical Thoughts about Science and Society Freeman Dyson
13. Templeton Prize Lecture
14. NYRB June 22, 2006
Bibliography
By Dyson
★ ''Disturbing the Universe'', 1979
★ ''Weapons and Hope'', 1984
★ ''Origins of Life'', 1986
★ ''Infinite in all Directions'', 1988
★ ''From Eros to Gaia'', 1992
★ ''Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson'', 1996
★ ''Imagined Worlds'', 1997
★ ''The Sun, The Genome and The Internet'', 1999
★ ''L'mportanza di essere imprevedibile'', Di Renzo Editore, 2003
★ ''The Scientist as Rebel'', 2006
★ ''Advanced Quantum Mechanics'', World Scientific, 2007. Dyson's 1951 Cornell lecture notes transcribed by David Derbes.
About Dyson
★ Brower, Kenneth, 1978. ''The Starship and the Canoe'', Holt Rinehart and Winston.
★ Schweber, Sylvan S., 1994. ''QED and the men who made it : Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga''. Princeton Univ. Press.
External links
★ Freeman J. Dyson's homepage
★ Freeman Dyson Biography
★ Wired magazine interview: Freeman Dyson's Brain
★
★ A google video: interviewer: Robert Wright editor: Greg Dingle
★ listen to a Freeman Dyson interview on Radiophiles.org
★ audio of NPR interview with Freeman Dyson
★ Disturbing the Universe: Interview with Freeman Dyson
★ Freeman Dyson wins $1m religion prize
★ Freeman Dyson's scientific publications from PubMed
★ In Praise of Open Thinking, audio from a panel discussion with his son George on ITConversations.com
★
★ Seed Magazine: On My Mind: Freeman Dyson
★ Templeton Prize acceptance lecture 2000
★ The Space Show radio interview
★ "Our Biotech Future", essay by Freeman Dyson, 2007
★ Review, ''The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet''
★ Technology and Social Justice PDF of lecture transcript presented at the Carnegie Council
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