Maker of Patterns

January 15, 2018
An epistolary memoir from a leading postwar physicist and mathematician, taking in the era from the 1940s to the end of the 1970s.World War II was an excellent time to get an education, writes English-born physicist Dyson (Dreams of Earth and Sky, 2015, etc.), a longtime professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton: "The famous old professors were all there, but there were hardly any students." Nonetheless, the war exerted some pull on his studies; in this collection of letters, he writes of operational research on detecting U-boats and such. Still, he heeded the advice of a senior professor who told him that "research never mixes well with learning," and he set to puzzling out his own problems in quantum electrodynamics, particle theory, and other fields. A dozen years on, he recorded, happily, that as a result of one experiment, "we now have the job of changing our theories to agree with the new information, and this is likely to lead to substantial progress." That passage is characteristic, for Dyson reveals himself to be wedded not to preconceived notions but to the primacy of proof, whether it be of that spinning particle or of the identity of a bomber on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1969. "Undoubtedly," he writes, "the radical students will be blamed for it." The author's account of events in the laboratory is punctuated by detours into popular culture (seeing, for instance, the film Treasure of the Sierra Madre on release in 1948 and finding in it "fairly obvious application to present-day international relations") and contemporary intellectual history such as the debut work of sociologist Amitai Etzioni. Advocates of science will find in Dyson an admirable model. Why go to Mars when we could irrigate the Sahara, he asks. The science of space travel may be 10 times the benefit in the end, he writes, but "the main purpose is a general enlargement of human horizons."A pleasure for science students and particularly of science humanely practiced.

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March 12, 2018
“I had the good fortune to live through extraordinary times with an extraordinary collection of friends,” writes Dyson (Dreams of Earth and Sky), a mathematician and physicist. In an effective dual narrative, he shares his life through letters spanning 1941 to 1978 as well as present-day reflections. Earnest and delightfully casual, the book is concerned more with the man than his science, as “family came first, friends second, and work third.” Dyson’s scientific work surfaces anecdotally, from his light bulb moment during a Greyhound bus trip on how to combine the rival radiation theories of Schwinger and Feynman to working at the General Atomic Laboratory on a bomb-propelled spaceship capable of going to Mars. The letters abound in informed references to notable figures, such as a description of J. Robert Oppenheimer spending his spare time “reading St. Thomas Aquinas in Latin and writing poetry in the style of Eliot.” Candor and closeness are built into the narrative, as his letters address immediate family members on personal topics such as two rather unconventional marriages, child-rearing, and public service during the Kennedy administration. Covering a dizzying array of events, this long volume intimately chronicles both the sweet and bitter parts of “the daily life of an ordinary scientist doing ordinary work.”

Starred review from February 15, 2018
Who but Dyson formulates revolutionary physics while riding on a Greyhound bus through Iowa cornfields? In other episodes in this remarkable epistolary autobiography, readers join Dyson as he assesses with Godel equations for a rotating version of Einstein's universe, as he defends Feynman's quantum theorems against Oppenheimer's doubts, and as he explores with Bohr the prospects for a nuclear spaceship. Readers will naturally value what Dyson reveals about how he built his towering reputation as a scientist. But Dyson draws the substance of his narrative from letters he sent his parents between 1940 and 1980, letters in which he discloses quite unscientific aspects of his lifeincluding the joys of romance, marriage, and fatherhood, as well as the trauma of divorce. Dyson's letter-driven chronicle also draws readers into the personal drama of leaving Europe at a time when political turbulence was incubating apocalyptic warfare. Through close association with America's leading scientists, Dyson sees how modern physics helps forge the deadliest weapons in that warfare. But Dyson never lets readers forget that, for all of their exceptional intellectual gifts, scientists live human lives defined more by family ties and friendships than by laboratory results. The perfect complement to Schewe's biography of Dyson (Maverick Genius, 2013).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2018

English-born Dyson (b. 1923) is an American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study. Dyson was inspired by Jim Watson, one of the scientists who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, to continue writing letters to his mother periodically describing his life in America. These letters, penned between 1940 and the early 1980s, were saved by his family and are the "raw material" of this book. Dyson credits famous mathematician G.H. Hardy for teaching him to be "a maker of patterns" by applying Srinivasa Ramanujan's arithmetical templates to his work. This collection covers the first half of the author's life and offers a firsthand account of one of the greatest periods of scientific discovery. The content reflects Dyson's priority to family, friends, and work--in that order. He does not go into any great length about his work in the letters to his parents as they were not concerned about technical details. Regardless, they form a historic account of modern science and some of its most influential thinkers. VERDICT An informative collection that is primarily recommended for scholars of physics and science. [See Prepub Alert, 10/9/17.]--Gary Medina, El Camino Coll., Torrance, CA

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