From so simple a beginning…

Vignettes in Science: 1

One of the thrilling moments of my life was when Freeman Dyson replied to my email. When the great Nobel Prize winning physicist Hans Bethe died in March 2005, I had sent my own perception of Bethe in the form of a small biography to Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the distinguished institution which Dyson has made his home for the last fifty years. I was pleased to hear Dyson say that he enjoyed reading my biography of Bethe, and that he ‘did not find anything wrong with it’. Hearing this from one of my scientific heroes, whose writings I have admired since college years, was inspirational indeed. One of my fond hopes is to meet Dyson someday.

I was especially pleased because this came from Dyson, who knew Bethe as well as anyone else, as a lifelong teacher and friend. Dyson was born in 1928 in England to highly educated and socially responsible parents, people of great common sense and culture. After spending a depressing period of time during the war as a statistician at British Bomber Command (where he could guage the enormous loss of life and apathy around him), he came to America, impressed by the men and women who had developed the atomic bomb and ended the war. As a graduate student with Bethe at Cornell in the late 1940s, Dyson was struck by his advisor’s informal demeanor and his scuffed shoes; in Europe, professors were distinguished and wore clean shoes. Bethe introduced Dyson to the easy camaraderie and friendly university atmosphere in America. It was Bethe who heartily recommended Dyson to Robert Oppenheimer, who was then director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Later, Dyson worked with another Bethe protégé, Richard Feynman. Thus, among other things, Dyson has been a friend, student, and colleague of three of the great scientists of the century.

Another Nobel Prize winner, Murray Gell-Mann, recalls how even the great Oppenheimer, a man as well-known for his harsh comments and cutting sarcasm as for his mastery of physics and poetry, could not stop praising Dyson’s achievements. This was not the least because although dozens of PhD.s have been awarded for work based on Dyson’s theories, Dyson himself never got his PhD. Since then, he has also had a curious aversion to the PhD. system, as a system that saps the strength and patience of bright scientists during their young and happy years. He might be the most distinguished scientist without a PhD. of the century.

Dyson never bothered to get a PhD. because he never needed it. The achievement for which he is best known for was an exceptional achievement that went beyond the trappings of any formal degree. In the late 1940s, physics was booming, and the newest stars in its galaxies were the young Turks Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger, who set out to reinvent the field and explain some glaring discrepancies in the new framework of quantum electrodynamics. Both were virtuoso masters of the art, but there was a problem; both had approaches that were radically different. Feynman’s physics was a physics of pictures and intuitive leaps, while Schwinger’s was a physics of exceedingly elegant mathematics, that nobody but he could understand. For some time, the world of physics was in despair as its practitioners struggled to reconcile these two views.

It was Dyson who resolved the dilemma and pointed the way forward. He had the good fortune to speak extensively with both Feynman and Schwinger. During a cross country trip in a Greyhound, Feynman’s diagrams and Schwinger’s equations all fell together, and Dyson realised that both of them were ways of looking at the same thing. If Japanese physicist Sin Itiro Tomonaga had not come up with his own formulation of QED, it is very likely that Dyson would have shared the Nobel Prize with Feynman and Schwinger.

This discovery catapulted Dyson to the front ranks of physicists during those remarkable years, and he was offered a permanent position at the exalted Institute for Advanced Study, where scholars meandering in the highest realms of human thought are paid to think, with no teaching and administrative duties. A roster of the Institute’s members included Albert Einstein, Kurt Godel, Wolfgang Pauli, John Von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, Edward Witten, and many other famous mathematicians and physicists who were temporary fellows at one time or another. With characteristic wit and pithiness, Dyson has delivered the ultimate description of that hallowed establishment, where thinking becomes almost an obligation for staid old professors; in his own words, “where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile”. Dyson himself seems to have steered clear of such a fate.

His passion for calculation has been legendary since then. In a typical brainstorming session, Dyson provides an answer to a posed question in a few minutes, and then the others who may include a Nobel Prize winner or two, go home and spend the next day calculating before arriving at the same answer. For almost twenty years after he joined the Institute, Dyson worked alongside Oppenheimer, Godel, John Von Neumann and Albert Einstein, and closely observed these giants of science while fortifying his own stature. During this time, his broad-ranging intellect has made contributions to everything from cosmology to quantum physics to the origins of life, from arms disarmament to designing nuclear spaceships to making telescopes see better. He is as accomplished a scientific polymath as any.

Dyson is also famous as a ‘futurist’, a title he himself disdains. He has written perceptive and novel accounts of his visions for technology, science, and humanity in the future. A listing of even some of his novel ideas (frozen fish in planetary orbits, human civilizations on comets, Dyson spheres, and the domestication of genetic engineering to name a few) would take too much space, and the reader is referred to his diverse writing listed below. Some of the main themes that Dyson has explored in his futuristic essays are space exploration, genetic engineering and nuclear weapons.

Dyson, thinking of himself as a heretic in science and giving due importance to heretical theories (after all, even if they are proven wrong, we take a big step forward in having learnt something) does fall short of convincing us about a few things. Most annoyingly, I find him to be a global warming skeptic, and while he has written about this a few times, he has never written a compelling, let alone convincing rebuttal of the topic. But as they say, nobody’s perfect.

What makes Dyson unique, however, is that he is one among very few scientists who have great mastery over not only science, but over the humanities and literature. His knowledge of poetry, history and philosophy, and his eye for novelistic detail is remarkably deep, and shows an acute sensitivity to human problems and human existence. His knowledge of the history and philosophy of science is profound and spans ten centuries of its development. Like his predecessor, Oppenheimer, Dyson has unique insights into human nature, and can supplement those insights by drawing on a rich reservoir of humanistic studies and ideals.

It is these qualities that make Dyson one of the finest and most elegant writers that I have come across, a real treasure among scientists. As he says himself, he has two passions in life; calculation, and English prose. And it shows. Who else can liberally and eloquently sprinkle his writing with snippets from the great poets, pathos from the great classics, and moral questions based on war and peace informed by the great events in history? Dyson’s memoir, Disturbing the Universe, is, along with Edward O. Wilson’s Naturalist, the finest scientific and social memoir I have come across. In it, he describes his disillusionment with the Second World War as a statistician working for bomber command, his emigration to the US, friendship and work with Oppenheimer, Feynman, Bethe, Edward Teller and others, and his subsequent life here, which has been an astonishingly successful collage of science, citizenship, humanity, and writing. Dyson has penned dozens of other lucid books cutting through an enormous swathe of science, history, religion, philosophy, poetry, human nature and future prognistication. Most of his books string together the many essays, book reviews, and articles that he has written, and the talks that he has given. Thus, there’s something in them for everyone. His trademark prose is clear, engaging, succint, and most characteristically gentle and sympathetic. His writings connect and expound on a medley of topics, from John Milton to the Civil War, from molecular biology to nuclear weapons, from Tennyson’s poetry to Newton’s mysticism. He has sat on numerous government committees, worked for arms disarmament, travelled around the country and world giving hundreds of lectures, worked and corresponded with the leading scientists of the times, and philosophically and substantially contributed to many branches of science.

In my opinion, Dyson’s greatest philosophical contribution to the history of science will be his understanding, appreciation, and exposition of what he calls the “craftsmanship of science”. Too often, sophisticated thinkers like to see science as progressing mainly through the great ideas advanced by its great thinkers. Too often lost in this paradigm, are the material contributions of science made by its inveterate tinkerers, inventors of apparatus, and conceivers and performers of elegant experiments, which stand as the ultimate arbiters of any theory. Dyson pays lavish due to the contributions of these craftsmen, and his affection for them always shines through his writings. He recognises Harvard historian Peter Galison’s view of science, in which it is the mundane sounding contributions of everyday scientific workers, sometimes forgotten names, which propel the field forward. For Dyson, the machinist who chisels out an important piece of particle physics equipment is every bit as significant as the theorist pondering the unfathomable mysteries of life or the cosmos. This view of Dyson’s can be neatly encapsulated in his recognition of Ernest Rutherford, an experimentalist who disdained deep theory, as being as great as Albert Einstein, the man who unlocked the key to the universe’s laws. While the debate about the greatness of scientific contributions becomes silly after an extent, Dyson’s point is extremely important; that in our recognition of scientific progress, equal credit must be given to the men and women who work and sculpt out the details, as to those who are the great intellectual unifiers and philosophers. This is mainly because, philosophy notwithstanding, science still progresses by observation and measurement. For most working scientists, “reality” is still tantamount to what they can measure. Without the instruments and techniques and methods that serve to vindicate every theory and model, science would be, in Max Planck’s words, simply “poetry, imagination”. In the pantheon of scientific heroes, Caroleus Linneaus the great taxonomist stands shoulder to shoulder with Charles Darwin, the great synthesist. Dyson’s appreciation of this facet of science is perhaps not too surprising considering the fact that even though he is a theorist who often wanders in the rarefied heights of abstraction, he considers himself first and foremost a problem solver. In this light, he has worked on many practical problems, including the design of land mines, nuclear reactors and telescopes.

To describe himself, in his usual eloquent manner, Dyson talks about two kinds of scientists, those who soar like hawks and are great surveyors of the landscape, and those who frolic in the mud like frogs, reveling in pretty and insightful details around them. Dyson unabashedly calls himself a frog. As someone noted however, he is the supreme frog prince among scientists.

With all these contributions and more, Dyson has become a leading scientist, intellectual and humanist of the last century. Now in his late eighties, he continues to write, speak, and have a lively mind that holds forth on diverse topics with characteristic insight and sensitivity. In his discussions of future technology, science, and humanity, one striking sentiment that endures is that of optimism. Dyson has lived through times of war and peace, and has seen that the most important determinants of times to come are the common people, in all their guises, who keep the flame of hope burning, and the future of humanity in their hands.

We can easily say that Freeman Dyson is one among them, who has in addition also shown us the light, and pointed the way forward with his fond hopes and aspirations for humankind.

Books by Freeman Dyson:
1. Disturbing the Universe- His autobiography, an absolutely stunning and eloquent memoir of science, history and society.
2. The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet- In this book, Dyson discusses from his own unique perspective how these three inventions have revolutionized human life and how they will contribute to its future. In it, he also talks about the craftsmanship of science.
3. Weapons and Hope- Written during the Cold War, this books still holds relevance for a world filled with the legacy of the nuclear age.
4. Infinite in all directions- The Gifford Lectures delivered by Dyson in Scotland. Major themes include the origin of life and the philosophy of science
5. The Scientist as Rebel- His latest book, a beautiful collection of essays, articles, book reviews, and talks, but mainly book reviews combined with commentary that goes much beyond just the review. Chapters include insightful passages on the Civil War and slavery, war and peace, scientific and military personalities such as Alfred Jodl, J. D. Bernal, Einstein, Feynman and Robert Oppenheimer, a view of the scientist as rebel, the craftsmanship of science, genetic engineering, colonization of the galaxy, language and culture, science and religion, and more.