Maverick Genius

by Phillip F. Schewe

  In the first of the two accounts, Dyson’s waking mind is grappling with astronomy. In June 1977 he was in Israel at an astronomy conference, where he and other scientists were arguing about the behavior of galaxies. The visible galactic motions did not seem to conform to the standard laws of physics. Either the laws were inadequate, Dyson said, or an additional phenomenon was at work, perhaps the existence of some so far undetected dark material in or around the galaxies.

  Everyone daydreams now and then. So even amid this galactic debate, Dyson found himself thinking of his son, who, at that moment, was on the other side of the world leading a party of twelve tourists along coastal Alaska in a small fleet of kayaks he had built himself.16 During his brief visit to the Northwest, Freeman had trusted to George’s nautical acumen and was sure that this Alaska voyage would go well too.

  Late that night, these two frontiers, galaxies and Alaska, got mixed up in Freeman Dyson’s sleepy mind. The dreams we have at night can sometimes be scripted in fantastical form from events and thoughts we had during the day, and so it was now. In Freeman’s dream he and George are in a two-seat craft. It is not a kayak this time but a small starship. They cruise not through the inlets of Vancouver but along a ramp, out the open roof of a large auditorium, and up into the sky. The father assures us that he trusts his son’s expertise. George will know what to do.

  They quickly leave the Earth behind and their field of view rapidly enlarges. They see stars and whole galaxies. Then the view gets larger still in the biggest possible way. The galaxies are all receding from each other; apparently the two men are seeing the noticeable expansion of the universe, the first humans to be privileged with a direct experience of the big bang.17 This imaginary journey could have been plucked from Olaf Stapledon’s novel Star Maker.

  In relating this slumbering vision Dyson does not indulge in overinterpretation. He doesn’t explain that the dream reverses the traditional parent-child roles; he does not assert that the dream denotes a longed-for reconciliation, ending a divide between a rebellious son and a constrictive father. A dream, after all, is a story we tell ourselves when we’re asleep and is neither right nor wrong.

  In Disturbing the Universe Dyson then turns from his dream journey across the galaxies back to his actual journey across Israel. He tells us that he was out driving near the Golan Heights, a pivotal battlefield in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The area also possesses biblical significance, and Dyson is fully alert and prepared to be impressed. Dyson has been told that his hotel stands on the same hill where, in one of the more dramatic episodes of the Bible, Elijah asked heaven to rain down punishment upon the false prophets, those attending the god Baal. In the book of I Kings, Elijah wins out over his rival prophets with God’s help.

  Dyson does not claim to be any kind of prophet. But he has, like Elijah, witnessed majestic things: stars, galaxies, and the big bang expansion of space-time. For Elijah the potent display of God’s powers was not enough. His soul craved a more reassuring sign. For Dyson too the display of astrophysical grandeur—as seen from a telescope or even in the form of his space odyssey dream with George—was not enough. He wanted to be a participant.

  I do not believe that we are tourists in our universe. I do not believe that the universe is mindless.… We are not merely spectators; we are actors in the drama of the universe.18

  This strikes a chord that will resonate through much of Dyson’s later writings and his public speaking. He, unlike most scientists, will always be searching for more than the detector readings or the colorations found in a test tube. He will be looking for a larger meaning in things, even if he can’t adequately say what those meanings are.

  Certainly while he was in Israel, Dyson looked for as much meaning as he could. On the hill where Elijah had preached Dyson hoped for inspiration. Elijah had been exhausted by the effort of combating the other prophets (arguing against the prevailing views of the day, you might say) and fled to a distant cave. What came next might be considered a dream, since an angel of God came upon Elijah and drew him out of the cave, where he was shown splendid evidence of divine majesty: a mighty fire, a fierce wind, and an earthquake. But then Elijah was vouchsafed a more subtle sign of the Lord in the form of a “still small voice.”

  The significance of the voice heard by Elijah has been much debated over the years. Dyson seems to think of it as affirming the idea that the most powerful forces in the cosmos are not necessarily geophysical or even astrophysical, but possibly something quieter and ineffable. Here at the end of Dyson’s book he makes the argument, rare nowadays for a prominent scientist, that science does not provide the only important knowledge about existence.

  Dyson wanted what Elijah had gotten. He wanted to encounter a still small voice. And then he did. Again Dyson doesn’t hold back from furnishing a lesson in the form of a dream, as if he were an ancient augurer and not the famous scientist and explicator of quantum electrodynamics. Again he refrains from interpreting the dream. Instead he gives the reader a sequence of sublime images.

  In this last dream he dwells not in a cave. Rather he is in his own Princeton kitchen. The meeting with God comes about not because of some angelic summons but through a telephone appointment. Dyson ventures forth not in a small spacecraft with his son but in a sort of celestial elevator with his two youngest daughters. The elevator ascends out of the roof and all the way to heaven, where the three step out into a throne room. Dyson would like to find God since he has questions to ask. He and the girls search about but find nothing until they come up to the throne itself. Here they see an infant and they take turns holding him. With this, Dyson’s book comes to a close:

  In the silence I gradually became aware that the questions I had intended to raise with him have been answered. I put him gently back on his throne and say goodbye. The girls hold my hand and we walk down the steps together.19

  Years later, when Dyson was asked about favorite sections from among his own writings over the years, he named these dream sequences from Disturbing the Universe.20

  REPERTORY THEATER

  Freeman Dyson might seek the sublime, but he does not look for it in caves. The Dyson household in the 1970s and 1980s was solidly middle-class. Conversation at the dinner table was not overly intellectual. The Dyson idea of a family vacation was for them to fly to a science meeting or the Jason gathering in Southern California each summer, where Freeman would work all day, every day, and the others would go to the beach. Once they kidnapped him. He drove them to the airport, where they insisted he come with them; they even had a ticket. So a week in Hawaii was his one vacation.

  Freeman was an attentive father, going to sporting events, musical concerts, and an occasional trip to hear choir music, practically the only time he would find himself in a church, whenever one of the girls was performing. He always had a briefcase filled with reports or books that needed reading. He didn’t get angry. He was soft-spoken.

  The children were aware that they had a famous father, but weren’t quite sure why. Rebecca once went to hear her father give a public lecture to see what all the fuss was about. She was impressed by the full-house audience. She was amazed to hear this man she knew so well speak so crisply, using such quotable language.21

  The four younger girls did well in school. For many years there were at least two or three members of the “Dyson gang” enrolled at Princeton High School. They grew up and went off to college: Dorothy to the University of California at Davis, Mia to Tufts, and Emily and Rebecca to Stanford.

  Family, friends, work. The bio-graph of an active life is best told through stories of interpersonal relations and of accomplishments. But no diet should be all protein. There should be some roughage also. For the sake of rounding out the human portrait, here is a more prosaic accounting of Dyson activities in the 1980s. The multitalented Mr. Dyson is like a repertory theater company, performing many things in rotation.

  As the new decade began Dyson was fifty-six years old, father of several grown childr
en and several still in their teenage years. He continued to be a much in demand speaker. In January 1980 the BBC interviewed him about the benefit and dangers of DNA research. In March he spoke at Rockefeller University about life in the universe. The next month he gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin about the relation of biology to physics. His host on that occasion, mathematician Richard Askey, said that Dyson’s talk was brilliant and that people there were talking about it for weeks.22

  The Dyson repertory for that year consisted of many parallel pursuits. He wrote a review in The New Republic about a book of Oppenheimer letters. He received an honorary degree from York University. In June he gave the keynote address at a mental health meeting in New Jersey on the subject of the grappling with the difficulties of life. In October he spoke at a conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. In this talk, entitled “Manchester and Athens,” he showed how these two cities represented metaphorically the need in science for both engineering and experimental science (Manchester) and theoretical science and reasoning (Athens).23 Later in the month he spoke in St. Louis (“Quick Is Beautiful”) about the need to be flexible in fostering new technology.24

  In January 1981 he was in Toronto talking about biology again, while in February he was in Philadelphia discussing priorities in astronomy.25 In April he visited Texas for a three-day meeting, where he caught up with his old friend Richard Feynman, and the University of Illinois for a talk about the diversity of life.26 In May it was Yale and the subject of scientists pursuing unfashionable ideas, then a reprise of “Quick Is Beautiful” in Austria. He spoke about life in the universe at Princeton in August and at Cambridge University in November. He appeared on two National Public Television programs: The Day After Trinity, about the Manhattan Project and its aftermath, and Return to Space. He traveled to Britain to receive an honorary doctorate at the City University of London and to Israel to receive the Wolf Prize for physics, one of the most prestigious awards in that subject.

  The Dyson repertory schedule for 1982 included a talk at MIT, the Compton Lecture, about “fighting for freedom with the technologies of death.” In March he spoke at a memorial event for Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein’s longtime secretary. Besides serving in that important capacity, she had babysat for the Dyson children in the 1960s. Dyson had gently chided her for refusing to be interviewed, thus shutting off an avenue for potential science historians.27 In April he repeated the unfashionable-research talk at the University of Minnesota. In October he spoke at the Institute for Advanced Study about space. The paperback edition of Disturbing the Universe was nominated for the National Book Award. He received an honorary degree at the New School in New York City.

  In November he spoke at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. His remarks about interstellar propulsion appeared in a book about extraterrestrial life; his remarks about unfashionable research appeared in a book published in Germany; and his comparison of physics and biology appeared in a Russian publication.

  In the mid-1980s he kept up his flow of lectures and articles. The New Yorker carried articles that later ended up in Dyson’s second book, Weapons and Hope. He reviewed two books about arms control for Science, and another for Nature. He wrote several articles for the science magazine Omni.28 A form of his unfashionable-research talk appeared in the Mathematical Intelligencer. Honorary degrees kept coming: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Susquehanna University.

  He went on a lecture tour of Japan, speaking about the origins of life. While in Tokyo he met up with Stephen Hawking for a drink and a foray through the city where Hawking was viewed as a celebrity. “I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ,” Dyson said. “Everywhere we went crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking’s wheelchair.”29

  Back in the United States, Dyson spoke at a banquet honoring his former Cornell colleague Edwin Salpeter and at a party for his Princeton friend physicist Gerard O’Neill. He delivered the Pick Lecture at the University of Chicago; his topic was missile defense and other issues relating to international peace.30 He spoke in Detroit about science and religion at a convention of Catholic bishops,31 at Harvard (the Phi Beta Kappa lecture) about exploration,32 and at the computer company Analog Devices about how we can’t predict future technologies by extrapolating from present-day technology.33 In 1985 Freeman Dyson returned to the Vancouver area to participate in a Japanese documentary about his 1975 reunion with George.

  Much of Dyson’s best work in the 1980s, his writing of essays and reviews, was performed at his office or at his house in quaint Princeton. But this man of fanciful visions does not follow a cloistered scholarly regimen. The Dyson repertory impulse does not permit this. Instead Dyson is often at the airport making a connection to yet one more (or two or three) speaking engagements on a dozen topics.

  The nuclear Dyson wrote an article for The New York Times about demystifying nuclear bombs.34 He wrote a letter to Physics Today suggesting alternatives to the gigantic atom smasher called the Superconducting Super Collider, then under construction in Texas, and later abandoned.35 He wrote a preface to a collection of essays by Oppenheimer.

  The historian Dyson moderated a meeting of the Princeton Historical Society about intellectual émigrés in Princeton in the 1930s and 1940s. He reviewed a book about Tolstoy and history.36 He wrote a review in The Christian Science Monitor of a book about George Kennan and spoke at a banquet honoring Kennan.37 In The New York Review of Books he contributed his name to a letter asking Israel to release Palestinian scientist Taysir Aruri.38

  The mathematical Dyson spoke at a meeting devoted to the centennial of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan39 and wrote several papers for technical journals.

  Dyson the public speaker delivered the Danz Lecture, “On Being the Right Size,” at the University of Washington.40 At IBM he spoke about Richard Feynman.41 At Duke University he gave the Fritz London Memorial Lecture, while at Yale he argued that the current Ph.D. training system in graduate school was cumbersome and did not encourage creative science.42

  Dyson received honors. His book Infinite in All Directions received the Phi Beta Kappa Award. He won the Gemant Award of the American Institute of Physics for conspicuous efforts to bring science to the attention of the general public. He received honorary degrees from DePauw University and Rider College and was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge. He became an associate member of the French Academy.

  Dyson the author: Disturbing the Universe was translated into French; Origins of Life (his third book) into Italian and Danish; and Weapons and Hope into Russian. He continued writing a river of pieces—feature articles, essays, book reviews—in Physics Today magazine, where he was, over a period of several decades, perhaps the most frequent outside contributor.

  The 1980s was so bustling a decade for him that three more chapters will be needed to tell the tale. Each of these will center upon an issue of great concern to Dyson. Each will entail the preparation of a book by him on that topic. In the first of these chapters the theme will be the specter of nuclear weapons. The chapter after that will look at biology and the history of living organisms from earliest terrestrial times on into the indefinite future. The third will be devoted to Dyson’s effort to reconcile science with philosophical and religious viewpoints.

  14. Nuclear Slavery

  Dyson as Abolitionist

  (1980s)

  Lying beneath a bush and bleeding from the head, apparently about to be shot dead by the assailants who had just taken his wallet, Dyson was enraptured momentarily by the glimpse of the surrounding greenery and the blue sky overhead. In the late 1930s Freeman Dyson’s childhood ended early with the coming of the world war. Now, decades later, here he was again expecting death, most likely within seconds. And yet he felt elated. Here he was, a man of substance, a thick schedule of appointments to keep, otherwise in good health, brought down by a blow to the head, but he felt ecstat
ic.

  He was—absurdly, considering his bloodied condition—thinking of Tolstoy. Like Prince Andrei, wounded at the battle of Austerlitz in War and Peace, Dyson disregarded his pain and reveled in the immensity of the cosmos and the goodness of existence. He was ready, right then, to be borne “away on the blue wave of eternity.”1

  He had been on his way to an ordinary business meeting at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., but because of the quick, violent intervention of a couple of thugs, had been granted a special insight: even in the midst of death, or near death, one could imagine that life was beautiful. Dyson was good at that, at spotting the secret signature of things. He was adept at unexpectedly finding a larger perspective. Right then, his thought was this: even if an individual were to die the universe would still go on.

  Dyson did not die. The muggers relieved him of his money but not his life. A passerby found him in the bushes outside the Interior Department and rescued him. Taken to his destination, Dyson continued to bleed, onto the marble floor of the National Academy. Like Prince Andrei, Dyson recovered from his wounds and was energized by his travail.

  The problems of the world went on. The greatest problem, Dyson felt, the greatest threat to the persistence of civilization, was the continuing existence of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of several countries. Famine, drought, war, epidemic had brought down this or that society. But never before had the destruction of hundreds of millions in an afternoon been possible in the past. A convocation of Catholic bishops, distressed at the prospects of nuclear war, declared that this was the first time since Genesis that mankind was capable of undoing God’s creation. What could be done about this grave peril? Surely you would need more than the sagacity and artistry of Lev Tolstoy to square off against such an immense problem.