Freeman Dyson
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Freeman Dyson in San Francisco in 2005 |
Freeman John Dyson (born
December 15,
1923) is a
British-
American physicist and
mathematician, famous for his work in
quantum mechanics,
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 proponent of
nuclear disarmament and
international cooperation.
Dyson worked as an analyst for
British Bomber Command during
World War II. After the war, he obtained a BA degree 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. 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.
In the years following the war, Dyson was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of
quantum electrodynamics which existed at the time -
Richard Feynman's
path integral formulation and the
variational methods developed by
Julian Schwinger and
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (
Dyson operator).
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
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:
*
The Sun, The Genome and The Internet*
Imagined Worlds*
From Eros to Gaia*
Disturbing the UniverseDyson 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.
As of 2003, Dyson is the president of the
Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by
Gerard K. O'Neill.
Dyson was a long time member of the
JASON defense advisory group.
Concepts
Dyson sphere
Main article:
Dyson sphereIn
1960 Dyson wrote a short paper for the journal
Science (vol. 131 p. 1667), entitled "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation".[
1] 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 civilisations 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 (20 minutes into
a video) that he used the word "artificial biosphere" in the article meaning a habitat, not a shape. The "science fiction writer", though he did not refer to himself as such,
Olaf Stapledon had a similar idea in a section of
Star Maker. Perhaps because of this Dyson says it should really be called the Stapledon Sphere. That said other writers, specifically
Bob Shaw, expanded on what Dyson further says was really his humor tacked on at the end of the article. One of the most famous science fiction examples was illustrated in an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which retired Engineer
Scotty (from the original
Star Trek) was found to have crash-landed on an abandoned Dyson sphere.
Larry Niven's novel
Ringworld was inspired by Dyson's concept, but dealt with only a much simpler structure.
Dyson tree
Main article:
Dyson treeDyson 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.
Dyson's transform
Dyson also has some credits in
Elementary number theory. His concept "Dyson's transform" led one of the most important
lemmata of
Olivier Ramaré's theorem that every even integer is a sum of at most six primes.
He 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.A boy in Tonganoxie, Kansas, USA, was named Dyson Felty in honor of Freeman Dyson (February 12 2000); when informed of this, Freeman Dyson unofficially adopted Dyson Felty as his godson.
*The character of
Gordon Freeman from
Half-Life was partially inspired by Freeman Dyson.
*Dyson has expressed skepticism towards
Global Warming.
*
A.I. Shlyakhter*
Dyson's eternal intelligence*
Astrochicken*
Dyson sphere*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.
*
L'importanza di essere imprevedibile, Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2003
*
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 Dysons 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
