PATTERNS IN SCIENCE AND LIFE: Freeman Dyson (on left), renowned as mathematician, physicist, and original thinker on multiple topics, talked with Institute for Advanced Study Director Robbert Dijkgraaf last Friday, April 13 at a celebration of Dyson’s new book, “Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters.” (Photo by Donald Gilpin)

By Donald Gilpin

The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) celebrated Freeman Dyson, the longest-serving professor in the Institute’s history, and his new book, Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters, with a public reading and interview on Friday, April 13 in Wolfensohn Hall on the IAS campus.

Dyson, 94, who first came to IAS from England in 1948 as one of an exceptional group of young physicists and mathematicians invited to the Institute by then Director J. Robert Oppenheimer, has worked with seven of the nine IAS directors over the past 70 years. Dyson is renowned as a founding father of quantum electrodynamics and one of the world’s most original thinkers.

The author of numerous articles and books on physics, mathematics, and an array of human issues from arms control and space travel to climate studies and even poetry and extraterrestrial life, Dyson was introduced by IAS Director Robbert Dijkgraaf as “a wise observer of the human scene” and also “a life-long contrarian.”

At the gathering attended by a capacity crowd of about 200, Dyson read for about 20 minutes from his new book, which is a collection of his letters from what he described as the first half of his adult life, 1941 to 1978. A conversation between Dijkgraaf and Dyson and a reception followed the reading.

In his early years at IAS Dyson, who had grown up in England and graduated from Cambridge University, wrote a letter every week to his parents in England, describing his life in America. He had the foresight to urge his mother to keep the letters, which she did.

“I started writing letters as a teenager,” Dyson said. “There were a lot more letters that didn’t get into the book.” He emphasized the value of letters, as opposed to the unreliability of memory, in recalling the truth of what happened. Politicians, and scientists too, he noted “write what they remember. It’s very different from the truth. The memories mold themselves and you make yourself look good. The real truth is in the letter that you wrote a few days after the event.”

In his preface to Maker of Patterns, Dyson, recalling a conversation in 1968 with Jim Watson, author of The Double Helix, modestly noted, “I do not have any great discovery like the double helix to describe. The letters record the daily life of an ordinary scientist doing ordinary work. I find them interesting because I had the good fortune to live through extraordinary historical times with an extraordinary collection of friends. Letters are valuable witnesses to history because they are written without hindsight. They describe events as they appeared to the participants at the time. Later memories of the same events may be seriously distorted by hindsight.”

Dyson’s readings and subsequent comments — high-spirited and humorous, with a generous dose of characteristic subversiveness — were replete with references to that “extraordinary collection of friends” and colleagues, which, in addition to Oppenheimer, included Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and other giants of 20th-century physics.

Dyson read excerpts from his book concerning his first impressions of Princeton and the Institute in 1948; his competitive relationship with Oppenheimer — “who would have dreamed that I should be coming to Prince-ton with the thought not of learning but of teaching Oppenheimer about physics? I had better be careful;” and his encounters with Feynman at Cornell — “Feynman and I really understand each other. I know that he is the one person in the world who has nothing to learn from what I have written, and he doesn’t mind telling me so. That afternoon Feynman produced more brilliant ideas per square minute than I have ever seen anywhere before or since.”

In the conversation with Dijkgraaf, Dyson commented on a variety of topics:

From children — “I’m interested in other people’s children. It’s a wonderful thing to see them grow, see them fighting their parents, especially if it’s not yourself;”

To his past prediction about space travel: “That was conspicuously wrong. That’s the great thing about predictions. Nature has much more imagination than we have.”

To arms control — “My conclusion is that the way to get ahead with arms control is unilateral. Do what you think is sensible and wait for the other side to respond. Don’t waste time with negotiation.”

To young scholars coming to IAS — “Don’t expect you’re going to solve the problems of the universe while you’re here. Do that when you get home. When you’re here, learn and make contacts. You don’t really have time to do any thinking while you’re here.”