Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Maker of patterns : an autobiography through letters / Freeman Dyson.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, [2018]Edition: First editionDescription: xvi, 400 pages ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780871403865
  • 0871403862
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Great minds around the billiard table -- War and peace -- Truth and reconciliation -- Cornell student -- Go west, young man -- Demigods on stilts -- Nolo contendere -- Well, doc, you're in -- The physicist in love -- Cornell professor -- Mycenean tablets and spin waves -- Moscow and La Jolla -- The forsaken merman -- A spaceship and a wedding -- Homecoming -- Working for peace -- Marching for justice -- Sitting in judgment -- Two deaths and two departures -- Adventures of a psychiatric nurse -- Whale worshippers and moonchildren.
Summary: "Both recalling his life story and recounting many of the major advances in twentieth-century science, a renowned physicist shares his autobiography through letters. While recognizing that quantum mechanics "demands serious attention," Albert Einstein in 1926 admonished fellow physicist Max Born that the theory "does not bring us closer to the secrets of the Old One." Aware that "there are deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself," Freeman Dyson, the 94-year-old theoretical physicist, has nonetheless chronicled the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics. Written between 1940 and the early 1980s, these letters to relatives form an historic account of modern science and its greatest players, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Whether reflecting on the horrors of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, or the considerable demands of raising six children, Dyson offers a firsthand account of one of the greatest periods of scientific discovery of our modern age"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography Dyson, F. D998 Available 33111009180148
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Having penned hundreds of letters to his family over four decades, Freeman Dyson has framed them with the reflections made by a man now in his nineties. While maintaining that "the letters record the daily life of an ordinary scientist doing ordinary work," Dyson nonetheless has worked with many of the twentieth century's most renowned physicists, mathematicians, and intellectuals, so that Maker of Patterns presents not only his personal story but chronicles through firsthand accounts an exciting era of twentieth-century science.

Though begun in the dark year of 1941 when Hitler's armies had already conquered much of Europe, Dyson's letters to his parents, written at Trinity College, Cambridge, often burst with the curiosity of a precocious seventeen-year-old. Pursuing mathematics and physics with a cast of legendary professors, Dyson thrived in Cambridge's intellectual ferment, working on, for example, the theory of partitions or reading about Kurt Gödel's hypotheses, while still finding time for billiards and mountain climbing. After graduating and serving with the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command operational research section, whose job it was "to demolish German cities and kill as many German civilians as possible," Dyson visited a war-torn Germany, hoping through his experience to create a "tolerably peaceful world."

Juxtaposing descriptions of scientific breakthroughs with concerns for mankind's future, Dyson's postwar letters reflect the quandaries faced by an entire scientific generation that was dealing with the aftereffects of nuclear detonations and concentration camp killings. Arriving in America in 1947 to study with Cornell's Hans Bethe, Dyson continued to send weekly missives to England that were never technical but written with grace and candor, creating a portrait of a generation that was eager, as Einstein once stated, to solve "deep mysteries that Nature intend[ed] to keep for herself."

We meet, among others, scientists like Richard Feynman, who took Dyson across country on Route 66, Robert Oppenheimer, Eugene Wigner, Niels Bohr, James Watson, and a young Stephen Hawking; and we encounter intellectuals and leaders, among them Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan, Arthur C. Clarke, as well as Martin Luther King, Jr.

The "patterns of comparable beauty in the dance of electrons jumping around atoms" invariably replicate themselves in this autobiography told through letters, one that combines accounts of wanton arms development with the not-inconsiderable demands of raising six children. As we once again attempt to guide society toward a more hopeful future, these letters, with their reenactment of what, at first, seems like a distant past, reveal invaluable truths about human nature.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Great minds around the billiard table -- War and peace -- Truth and reconciliation -- Cornell student -- Go west, young man -- Demigods on stilts -- Nolo contendere -- Well, doc, you're in -- The physicist in love -- Cornell professor -- Mycenean tablets and spin waves -- Moscow and La Jolla -- The forsaken merman -- A spaceship and a wedding -- Homecoming -- Working for peace -- Marching for justice -- Sitting in judgment -- Two deaths and two departures -- Adventures of a psychiatric nurse -- Whale worshippers and moonchildren.

"Both recalling his life story and recounting many of the major advances in twentieth-century science, a renowned physicist shares his autobiography through letters. While recognizing that quantum mechanics "demands serious attention," Albert Einstein in 1926 admonished fellow physicist Max Born that the theory "does not bring us closer to the secrets of the Old One." Aware that "there are deep mysteries that Nature intends to keep for herself," Freeman Dyson, the 94-year-old theoretical physicist, has nonetheless chronicled the stories of those who were engaged in solving some of the most challenging quandaries of twentieth-century physics. Written between 1940 and the early 1980s, these letters to relatives form an historic account of modern science and its greatest players, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking, and Hans Bethe. Whether reflecting on the horrors of World War II, the moral dilemmas of nuclear development, the challenges of the space program, or the considerable demands of raising six children, Dyson offers a firsthand account of one of the greatest periods of scientific discovery of our modern age"-- Provided by publisher.

Powered by Koha