Lunch with Freeman Dyson | Hacker News Reader

Lunch with Freeman Dyson

nytimes.com

56 pointsunquote14 comments

I enjoy reading about Dyson and reading his writings. Among the greats he seems the most human. Von Neumann was always this martian with an IQ of 500, Einstein the quintessential absent-minded professor, Feynman the trickster genius, Landau the force if nature in life and research. But stories about Dyson always radiate human warmth. Very inspiring.

I actually think Schwinger is (one of) the most human, by which I mean flawed.

He was famous - from Gell-Mann to Dyson to [insert famous field theorist] - for being deliberately incomprehensible when explaining himself, very stubborn when it came to new ideas (to an almost ridiculous extent if Murray Gell-Mann was being serious) and almost literally obsessed with mathematical beauty over matching experiment.

Feynman was also flawed, but more as a man than a scientist.

Edit: A lesser-known but still very important particle physicist, Tom Kibble was known for being extremely humble and straightforward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glHr9yrV2AI

https://youtu.be/UKbp85zpdcY?t=270 Freeman Dyson speaking to the candidness of Schwinger in private one-on-one discussions.

Thanks, the whole interview is extremely interesting and relaxing to watch:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzDA6mtmKQE...

That's actually partly what I meant in the sense that he was still normal underneath the ego(?)

He told us a story about being in London during ww2 as a teenager. He remarked, with a grin, that he wasn't afraid. Like a teenager, he rather enjoyed the crinkly sound of buildings getting crushed. !

He fell in love with math reading Bell's "Men of Mathematics"

Sounds like his mother had a lot to do with that.

He's the only Christian of the five you mention. Dunno if that was done on purpose.

He does seem especially nice though.

https://archive.md/99c88

Appreciate you posting that archive version.

NY Times article will not translate to other languages via Google itools for more than 2 seconds, it is blocked.

The author keeps referring to him as Dr. Dyson when he was proud of never having taken a Ph.D and explicitly hating the Ph.D system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzC1IRYN_Ps&list=PLVV0r6CmEs...

I emailed the author on that very point, and she said the decision to use "Dr Dyson" was an informed choice made by an editor and was out of her hands.

Thank you. I think that is editorial overreach and given Dyson's stated views, very disrespectful.

He did have “two dozen” Dr.h.c.’s though [1]

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/freeman-d...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com