Freeman Dyson
Overview
Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is a British-born American theoretical physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, famous for his work in quantum field theory
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...

, solid-state physics
Solid-state physics
Solid-state physics is the study of rigid matter, or solids, through methods such as quantum mechanics, crystallography, electromagnetism, and metallurgy. It is the largest branch of condensed matter physics. Solid-state physics studies how the large-scale properties of solid materials result from...

, astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

 and nuclear engineering
Nuclear engineering
Nuclear engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the application of the breakdown as well as the fusion of atomic nuclei and/or the application of other sub-atomic physics, based on the principles of nuclear physics...

. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a nontechnical online magazine that covers global security and public policy issues, especially related to the dangers posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction...

. Dyson has lived in Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a community located in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It is best known as the location of Princeton University, which has been sited in the community since 1756...

, for over fifty years.
Dyson's father was the English composer Sir George Dyson
George Dyson (composer)
Sir George Dyson KCVO was a well-known English musician and composer. His son is the physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson and among his grandchildren are the science historian George Dyson and Esther Dyson...

;
his mother was trained as a lawyer but after Dyson was born worked as a social worker. Despite sharing a last name, he is not related to the early 20th century astronomer Frank Watson Dyson
Frank Watson Dyson
Sir Frank Watson Dyson, KBE, FRS was an English astronomer and Astronomer Royal who is remembered today largely for introducing time signals from Greenwich, England, and for the role he played in testing Einstein's theory of general relativity.- Biography :Dyson was born in Measham, near...

, but as a small boy Freeman Dyson was aware of Frank Watson Dyson.
Quotations

I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.

Missed Opportunities (1972)

The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.

As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow|John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler|Frank J. Tipler, p. 318

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.

"Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". Interview with Donald J. Albers, The College Mathematics Journal, vol 25, no. 1, (January 1994)

The progress of science requires the growth of understanding in both directions, downward from the whole to the parts and upward from the parts to the whole. A reductionist philosophy, arbitrarily proclaiming that the growth of understanding must go only in one direction, makes no scientific sense. Indeed, dogmatic philosophical beliefs of any kind have no place in science.

"The Scientist as Rebel" in New York Review of Books (25 May 1995)

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

Imagined Worlds (1997)

There is a great satisfaction in building good tools for other people to use.

 
x
OK