Acclaimed physicist Freeman Dyson, who pondered the origins of life, interstellar travel and many other topics, died Friday at the age of 96.

His daughter Mia Dyson told NPR that her father died after a short illness.

Freeman Dyson was known for groundbreaking work in physics and mathematics but his curiosity ranged far beyond those fields.

“He never got a Ph.D.,” says Robbert Dijkgraaf, director for the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., where Dyson worked. “He felt he was an eternal graduate student, and so he had a license to be interested in everything.”

Dyson was born in Crowthorne, England, in 1923. He studied physics and mathematics at Trinity College in Cambridge, where he worked with physicists including Paul Dirac and Arthur Eddington. During World War II, he was a civilian scientist with the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/28/810433230/physicist-and-iconoclastic-thinker-freeman-dyson-dies-at-96?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&fbclid=IwAR1qphgqHhHUG0MjTcFySDuOa3RKe2qJ0h7B5TaL7IXhk6kvWYD2D07hi8A

A product of his time, I suppose. He was a bit fucked up by religion but this may have related to his guilt over his wartime work in Bomber Command.

He came up with a few good ideas:

Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson’s transform, a fundamental technique in additive number theory, which he developed as part of his proof of Mann’s theorem; the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson’s eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Bubblecar said:

A product of his time, I suppose. He was a bit fucked up by religion but this may have related to his guilt over his wartime work in Bomber Command.

He came up with a few good ideas:

Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson’s transform, a fundamental technique in additive number theory, which he developed as part of his proof of Mann’s theorem; the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson’s eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

One of the greats. An original thinker.

Some had written on his wiki page that he died of Aids. That has now been fixed up.

He was faculty advisor to John A Phillips, the student who designed an A-bomb when still at Uni.

Bubblecar said:

He was a bit fucked up by religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Based solely on the TATE article, he doesn’t sound really “fucked up” by religion.

I probably did know he was born in the UK once, but if you had asked me yesterday I would have said he was American.

Crowthorne is just up the road from the 2nd last place I lived in England.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

He was a bit fucked up by religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Based solely on the TATE article, he doesn’t sound really “fucked up” by religion.

I probably did know he was born in the UK once, but if you had asked me yesterday I would have said he was American.

Crowthorne is just up the road from the 2nd last place I lived in England.

He talked a lot of shit:

>Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

He was embarrassing.

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

He was a bit fucked up by religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

Based solely on the TATE article, he doesn’t sound really “fucked up” by religion.

I probably did know he was born in the UK once, but if you had asked me yesterday I would have said he was American.

Crowthorne is just up the road from the 2nd last place I lived in England.

He talked a lot of shit:

>Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

He was embarrassing.

OK, but it’s harmless shit.

>>I probably did know he was born in the UK once

He wasn’t born again?

Peak Warming Man said:

>>I probably did know he was born in the UK once

He wasn’t born again?

:)

Bubblecar probably has more background information on that one.

The Rev Dodgson said:

Bubblecar said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

Based solely on the TATE article, he doesn’t sound really “fucked up” by religion.

I probably did know he was born in the UK once, but if you had asked me yesterday I would have said he was American.

Crowthorne is just up the road from the 2nd last place I lived in England.

He talked a lot of shit:

>Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences.

He was embarrassing.

OK, but it’s harmless shit.

Yep. Close to the border between genius and madness.