Maker of Patterns

by Freeman Dyson

  From the Moonchildren program, April 1978, by Miriam Dyson: To describe the sixties in one paragraph would be to describe the color red to someone who is blind. One could ramble on about Vietnam, the riots, the generation gap, any of these things which gave the sixties its label. But the color would be left out. Color is a feeling. The sixties is a feeling, a color. A color seen only by those who lived, fought, loved and survived the sixties.

  JUNE 15, 1978, PRINCETON

  On Saturday morning I took the train to Washington and walked as usual the two miles through the ghetto area to my hotel. People friendly as usual. No trouble. The hotel is in the posh area two blocks from the White House and four blocks from the academy. After lunch I walked out of the hotel to go to a meeting at the academy. A young black man came up to me and began talking in an educated voice about how to find the quickest way to the Kennedy Performing Arts Center. I walked along with him and chatted in a friendly way. His conversation seemed a bit strange, he used a lot of big words that he didn’t understand, but I was quite unsuspecting. Then as we walked past some bushes his accomplice came quietly behind me and grabbed me around the neck. The accomplice must have been hiding in the bushes but I never saw him. They quickly pulled me into the bushes, hit me three times on the side of the head, and left me lying on the ground while they picked my pockets and briefcase. All they got was a wallet with seventy-five dollars and some pictures of the girls.

  I was fully conscious the whole time and in a state of spiritual peace that is good to remember. I saw the bright sunshine filtering down through the bushes, and it was beautiful. I thought, very likely these fellows will put a bullet into me to keep me from talking. I was quite ready for death, and it did not seem frightening at all. I thought, life has been good to me and this death is also good, with the bright sun and the green bushes. It is good to know that death can be so friendly. Then after a few seconds the men ran away and I picked myself up and found a Good Samaritan who drove me the short distance to the academy. My entrance into the academy was quite dramatic. There I was among friends. Best of all, the thugs didn’t even break my glasses. I had the bifocals on when they attacked me. At the hospital in Washington the police came to talk to me, and I told them exactly where the attack occurred and asked if they could look for the glasses. An hour later a grinning policeman came in with the bifocals, not even scratched. Fortunately they let me out of the hospital right away, and so I traveled back to Princeton in great style in a private air-taxi, landing at the little airstrip only two miles from home. In less than five hours from the time of the accident, Imme and the girls came to get me. I looked so ugly that first evening that Miriam couldn’t bear to look at me. But now I am back to my normal beauty with some glorious sunset colors added. I had only two restless nights and no bad pain. For the first two days I was seeing double. That was all. No concussion, no headaches. Amazing luck.

  The whole of Monday I was pushed around from one doctor to another, and my head was shot through with X-rays. The score was three fractures, upper jaw, right cheekbone, and the floor of the right eye. This spoilt our family record of not having any broken bones. This morning I passed another important milestone. I sneezed for the first time since the accident, and none of the loose bones fell clattering to the floor. The amazing thing is how well everything functions, brains, eyes, ears, teeth all okay. I only missed one working day at the Institute. Today I called the plastic surgeon, and he said he doesn’t want to see me anymore. Thank God. Now I am out of his clutches. When Imme and I went to see him on Monday, he was itching to get me laid out on the table so he could begin to carve. I must confess he scared me more than the thugs who beat me up in Washington. I am now free of him and can let Nature do her job of healing.

  A close encounter with death teaches us important truths about human nature. We are not only social animals. We are also fighting animals. We may dream of universal brotherhood, but when the bugle sounds, we run bravely into battle. Battered and bruised in a surprise attack, I found myself unexpectedly reacting to it with calm courage and joy. I could handle it much better than I would ever have imagined. In every culture and every battlefield, from the Spartans at Thermopylae to the Jews at Masada, the men who died in battle are remembered and honored as heroes. In the battle of Princeton, George Washington rode his horse at the head of his troops, a conspicuous target for the British sharpshooters. He knew that an act of reckless bravery would make him a more effective leader of his country in the long struggle that lay ahead. In the future as in the past, reckless bravery will be honored, and fighters will be leaders. We must try as hard as we can to make peace with our enemies and get rid of weapons of mass destruction, but we cannot expect to extinguish the fighting spirit and tribal loyalty that are deeply ingrained in our nature. Perpetual peace is a worthy goal, but it is likely to remain out of our reach.

  A world of turmoil and violence is our legacy to future generations. They need to understand why science has failed to give us fair shares and social justice, and they need to work out practical remedies. This is not a job for scientists to do alone. It will need a worldwide collaboration of scientists with economists, political activists, environmentalists, and religious leaders, to lift science and society out of the swamp where we are stuck. Pure science is best driven by intellectual curiosity, but applied science needs also to be driven by ethics. Our grandchildren will have a chance to make this happen. One of them is the girl with the pink Afro who spoke at the beginning of this book.

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  INDEX

  Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

  Abel, Niels, 169

  Acapulco, Mexico, 264

  Advanced Research Projects Agency, 246

  “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” (Yeats), 93–94

  Air Force, U.S., 90

  Albuquerque, N.Mex., 82–83, 86, 215

  Aleut Indians, 366

  Alliluyeva, Svetlana, 325, 345–46

  Alps mountain range, 4, 121

  Alston, Wallace, 375

  Amarillo, Tex., 85

  American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 379

  American Federation of Labor, 299

  American Journal of Physics, 348

  American Physical Society, 63, 134, 155, 201, 232, 276

  Amsterdam, 38, 194

  Analytical Engine, The (Bernstein), 311

  Andersen, Hans, 221

  Anderson, Maxwell, 72

  Ann Arbor, Mich., 82, 90–94, 99, 120, 138, 153, 164–65, 174

  see also Michigan, University of

  Apollo mission, 293, 346

  Arizona, 220

  Arkansas, 298

  Arlington Cemetery, 285

  Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 283–84, 287–91, 294–97, 319, 340

  Armstrong, Robert, 375

  Army, U.S., 98, 340–41

  Arnold, Matthew, 221

  Asano, Taro and Sachiko, 351–55

  Asilomar conference, 168, 373

  Aspen, Colo., 223–26

  Astronomical Advisory Committee, 292–93, 306, 319

  Athens, Greece, 344

  Atkey, Eleanor (grandmother), 321

  Atkin, Oliver, 20

  Atlantic Monthly, 139

  Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 59, 161, 186, 208, 211–14, 309

  Australia, 32, 324

  Austria, 217, 226

  Bach, Johann Sebastian, 226, 313

  Bahar, Jacub, 6

  Banbury, England, 40

  Bangor, Wales, 7

  Basel, Switzerland, 157–58, 162

  Basel, University of, 162

  Bates, Jim, 367, 371–72

  Bay of Pigs, Cuba, 280

  BBC Studios, 7, 15–16, 187

  Beijing, China, 281

  Belgium, 297

  Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 278–79

  Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 42

  Berkeley, Calif., see California, University of, at Berkeley

  Berlin, Germany, 36, 45, 79, 225, 231, 350, 363

  Bernstein, Jeremy, 311

  Besicovitch, Abram Samoilovich, 2–14, 17–19, 22–25

  Bethe, Hans, 56–60, 63–71, 74, 82, 92, 103–5, 117–18, 122, 132, 135, 148, 154, 163, 166, 177–79, 193, 208, 325, 329

  Bethe, Rose, 63, 148, 329

  Bevan, Aneurin, 284

  Bevin, Ernest, 284, 299

  Biddle, Martin, 344

  Biden, Joe, 316

  Bigelow, Julian, 186

  Bing, Rudolf, 32

  Birmingham, England, 36, 105–6, 167

  Birmingham, University of, 60, 63, 135–73, 179

  “Birthday Poem for Thomas Hardy” (Day Lewis), 160

  Blake, William, 336

  Bletchley Park, 149

  Bohr, Aage, 154

  Bohr, Niels, 130–31, 147, 154, 169, 266–67

  Bole, Hazel, xv–xvi

  Bomber Command, see Royal Air Force (RAF)

  Bonham-Carter, Marcus, 54

  Born, Max, 310

  Boston, Mass., 113–19, 166, 252, 261, 306, 328, 379

  Boston College, 152, 190

  Boulder, Colo., 339

  Bowra, Maurice, 182

  Brahms, Johannes, 38, 233

  Brave New World (Huxley), 9

  Brazil, 142–43, 146

  Bristol, University of, 69, 105, 132–35, 141–43

  Britain, see United Kingdom

  British Atomic Energy Establishment, 163–64

  British Columbia, Canada, 371

  British Columbia, University of, 366

  Brno, Czechoslovakia, 18

  Brookhaven National Laboratory, 174–76, 228–29, 233–34, 281

  Brower, Kenneth, 340–41, 364–65, 370–71

  Bruckner, Anton, 44

  Budapest, Hungary, 145

  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 71

  Burnell, Jocelyn, 240

  Bush, George H. W., 340

  Caen, France, 115

  California, 63, 66, 69, 82, 94–95, 119, 132, 147, 159, 177, 202, 208, 312

  California, University of:

  at Berkeley, 63–64, 67–69, 95–98, 102, 105, 117, 132, 137, 141–43, 154, 159, 177, 185, 201, 233, 248, 332–34

  at San Diego, 312

  at Santa Barbara, 334–37

  California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 137, 163

  Calvin, Melvin, 66, 95–98

  Cambridge, England, xii, 2, 11, 23, 34, 37–38, 42, 56, 75, 147, 150, 298

  Cambridge, Mass., 66, 329–30

  Cambridge University, xv, 3, 5, 9, 18, 39–41, 69, 73, 78–79, 100, 105, 135, 152, 166, 196, 217, 223, 282, 29
3, 309, 320

  Camp David Accords, 305

  Canada, 174, 202, 210, 281

  Canadian Journal of Mathematics, 149

  Canberra, Australia, 323–24

  Caras, Roger, 320–21

  Carnegie Corporation, 317

  Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 172, 313

  Carter, Jimmy, 378

  Castro, Fidel, 279

  Catholic Theological College, 43

  Caxton, William, 357–58

  Chadwick, John, 191

  Chalk River Laboratories, 281

  Chang, Cheng Shu, 124

  Chapman, Sydney, 182

  Charney, Jule, 186

  Charpak, Georges, 121, 194

  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 173

  Chiasso, Switzerland, 168

  Chicago, Ill., 54, 88–90, 94, 98–99, 141–47, 151, 166, 179–81, 338

  Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, 145

  Childhood’s End (Clarke), 312

  Chile, 362

  Chillicothe, Mo., 234–35

  China, 336–37

  Churchill, Winston, xv, 21, 267–68

  Citizen Kane (film), 33

  Civil Rights Act, 289

  Clark, Ronald, 347

  Clarke, Arthur, 311–12

  Cleveland, Ohio, 83, 100

  Close, Frank, 202

  Cockcroft, John, 164–65

  Colorado, 159

  Columbia College, 78–79

  see also King’s College

  Columbia University, 66, 103, 116–21, 124, 135, 138, 154, 157, 179, 189, 206, 222, 225, 232–34, 286, 290

  Commonwealth Foundation, 54–56, 82, 117, 163–64

  Communist Party, 22, 76, 92, 130, 201

  Como, Italy, 157–58

  Congress, U.S., 196, 218, 284, 289, 302

  Copenhagen, Denmark, 116, 147, 266

  Cornell University, 56–58, 64, 69–70, 73, 82–83, 99–100, 103–4, 127, 132, 138, 163–69, 174, 177–81, 184, 200–201, 208, 218, 229, 248–49

  Cornwall, England, 26

  Council for a Liveable World, 316

  Courant, Ernst, 174–75

  Crete, Greece, 191

  Creutz, Ed, 233

  Crick, Francis, xiii

  Cuba, 278–79

  Cunliffe, Marcus, 54–55

  Curve of Binding Energy, The (McPhee), 359

  Dachau concentration camp, 31–32

  Dallas, Tex., 303