Talk:Freeman Dyson

Dated discussion

I removed the "on tv" section because it repeats what was already said in the part about the dyson sphere. Also, this article is about FREEMAN Dyson, NOT the Dyson Sphere. There IS a difference, and while the Dyson Sphere was shown on Star Trek, the physicist was not...unless i recall that episode entirely wrong. Either way, it's still repetitive. Archtemplar 08:20, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Problems.

1) "It is not so well known he is among the most renowned Hardy's students." - Who? What?

2) "Dyson was first physicist who realised Q.E.D. theory has 2 different faces." - What does this mean?

3) "His drive with Feynmann and spending a night in a "hotel" is very anecdotal." - Could use details.

4) "Dyson also studied the faith of the Universe, a subject which is very active again today." - What the heck?

5) "His daughter is the well-known Esther Dyson." - Well known for what, if one may be permitted to ask.

An answer:

1) The Hardy referred to was probably G.H. Hardy (author of "A Mathematician's Apology") He preceded Freeman Dyson at Winchester. Both of them disliked the place, but were thankful for the space it gave them to study maths as they wanted (-- the school organised a lecturer from a nearby university to teach the clever pupils weekly). I seem to remember Dyson making reference to Hardy at the beginning of one of his collection of papers -- he had spent his time studying some epic maths foundation work which he liked to believe Hardy had left behind for the next budding mathematician in need of escape from the world of a public school. I don't think Hardy ever taught him. J

---

2) Julian Schwinger's formal mathematics and Richard Feynman's intuitive mathematics were both correct representations of Quantum Electrodynamics.Lestrade 01:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Another answer:

4) that's the FATE of the universe, a somewhat different thing. Speculation on the long-term evolution of the universe and how long life can survive within it

I believe (I think Freeman mentions it somewhere in one of his books) that he was the son of a well known musician, George Dyson. I think that would be Sir George Dyson, who should perhaps get his own entry in the Wikipedia. Malcolm Farmer 18:52, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

5) Esther Dyson is an expert on the effect of technology on businesses and society.Lestrade 01:48, 18 February 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Many of these questions are answered in a long interview with Dyson on YouTube, which has been downloaded broken up into 157 segments. The book he thinks G H Hardy donated anonymously to his school was the "Cours d'Analyse de l'Ecole Polytechnique" by Camille Jordan. He was taught by Hardy when he went up to Cambridge in 1941: there were only about five students in his class, so they all sat around a table in a small room for the lectures. NRPanikker (talk) 02:50, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Infobox ?

This page could use an infobox. Someone who is knowledgeable about Freeman Dyson should create it

Emphasis, etc

Dyson was an original thinker, no doubt about that. The problem with the text is that the selection you've chosen makes FD seem like an eccentric. What about mentioning his work for the military? - that would give a boost to his down to earth credentials.

Like many theorists, Dyson had a philosophical turn of mind. He never felt at easy about the existence of dimensionless constants derived from fundamental physical constants. Dyson speculated that $alpha$ (approximately equal to 1/137) was really a variable proportionate to the age of the universe.

There is more that I could mention, and perhaps I will..

--Philopedia 18:05, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Institute for Advanced Study, Not Princeton!

The article incorrectly said Dyson served on the faculty at Princeton University. In reality, he was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), where he is now professor emeritus. IAS is in Princeton, NJ but is wholly independent of Princeton University. I have made the correction.

Freeman Dyson was on the Physics faculty of Princeton University during the 1960s.Lestrade 01:47, 18 February 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Educational Background Misleading

The statement "Dyson received a Sc.D. from Bates College in 1990" is very misleading. He does not possess an earned doctorate (look at the date, for creeps sake!). This in an honorary doctorate, and should be so noted. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1945 with a BA degree in mathematics. He went on to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and studied with Bethe. He did not get a degree, however. This is not meant to be derogatory. Dyson took over Feynman's professorship at Cornell, and could easily have shared the Nobel Prize in physics for QED if the recipient list for the prize wasn't limited to three persons. Never-the-less, this is his true educational background, and it should be stated correctly if this article is going to purport to be a legitimate biography of this individual.

Fliegernsympathie

How could one introduce into the article the fact that Dyson totally supported the German bombers who were destroying British cities? He stated that his hatred of British colonialism resulted in his unstated support of Nazi aggression.Lestrade 14:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

The following excerpt is from Freeman Dyson's statement at http://www.edge.org/documents/whatnow_print.html#dysonf

"The events of September 11 brought to mind another vivid and uncomfortable memory. I am sixteen years old, lying in bed at my home in London on a noisy night in September 1940. I am violently hostile to the British Empire and everything it stands for. I hate London, the citadel of oppression, with its grandiose buildings sucking the wealth from every corner of the world. I lie in bed listening to the bombs exploding and the buildings crumbling. What joy to hear, after each explosion, the delicious sound of buildings falling down, the great British Empire audibly crumbling. The joy far outweighs any fear that my own home might be hit, or any pity for the people in the falling buildings. How many sixteen-year-olds all over the world are now seeing on television the pictures of the World Trade Center buildings collapsing, and feeling the same joy that I felt in 1940. I find it easy to imagine the state of mind of the young men who so resolutely smashed those planes into the buildings. Almost, I could have been one of them myself."

Lestrade 19:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)Lestrade

I'm pretty sure that you're misreading that quote. Clearly he is saying that sixteen-year-olds have some pretty stupid ideas. While that's an obvious idea, what is unique is Freeman's exposition of his ideas at sixteen. RussNelson 17:49, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that I am not misreading that quote. Clearly he is saying exactly what he is saying, not what User:RussNelson thinks that it would be nice for him to be saying.Lestrade 13:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Why don't you ask him? RussNelson 19:10, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Why ask him? Dyson made his thoughts as clear as the noonday sun in his written statement. It takes some creative talent, though, and strong intention, to take his quoted words and turn them until they can be understood in a totally different or opposite way. Usually, only academics are adept at such exercises. Besides, User:RussNelson, do you think that it is a simple matter to impose upon Dyson and ask a question, even if it is about a matter in which he made himself perfectly clear? Lestrade 00:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

It is very simple to ask Dyson. Just send him an email. The reason to ask him is equal parts courtesy and accuracy. Courtesy is making him aware of this before doing anything and making sure he has no objections to being so categorized. Accuracy is making sure what is said in the article is representative of his present views. I think Freeman deserves at least that much respect. Michaelbusch 00:16, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The quote is from the prestigious Edge Foundation website. This leads me to accept it as being accurate. The thoughts that are communicated in the quote are as utterly clear as pure spring water in a crystal chalice. There is no ambiguity and no obscurity.Lestrade 00:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

When it comes to Freeman's opinions, the only source I trust is Freeman himself. I have sent him an email. I will let you know if/when he responds. Michaelbusch 00:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Freeman does not object to having this material included in the article. However, it must be very clear that he did not support the Nazis: he merely hated the British empire. Michaelbusch 16:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Thank you both for sticking to this. You helped make sense of a collection of Dyson's old essays on political matters, The Scientist as Rebel, published the year you both wrote. We picture Dyson as a scientist; but the 16 year old you mention above, was being brought up in the artistic household of a famous British composer during the Thirties, when Pacificism was a religion and Gandhi a saint. (Indeed, even today in my own humanities department, pacificism is still a religion and Gandhi a saint.) Dyson's book describes in detail his lifelong attraction to pacificism, and his attempt to find some form of it he could actually practice. It reads like the wrestle of a strayed Catholic scientist with a childhood faith he loves, but can no longer believe in.Profhum (talk) 09:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Ghastly Image

I saw Prof. Dyson on Wednesday. He is a small, frail, kindly-looking elderly man with a pleasant, polite manner. The photo of him in the article looks like it is out of a 1934 James Whale movie.Lestrade 12:58, 24 March 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Yes, it's not the best picture. I'm not sure my picture is any better, but at least he's smiling in it, so we'll run it up the flagpole and see who shoots at it. RussNelson 18:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Much better, IMHO. Kla'quot 02:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Much should be added to this entry

This entry does not do justice to one of the great original minds of the 20th century. Freeman Dyson is, I think, far more interesting than, say, Buckminster Fuller, Stephen Hawking, Alvin Toffler. And he really knows modern physics.

I should add that Dyson wrote re 9/11, quoted above, was probably very honest, but still dismays. His reaction to the bombing of London was a lot like the reaction of most Irish to the fact that Germany and England were at war; they secretly hoped for a German victory. To fail to see that a Nazi victory over the UK was a far greater evil than the British Empire is deplorable in the extreme. It is also easy to forget that hundreds of Pakistanis, presumably all Muslim, died in 9.11. It would seem that Dyson has a radical streak. If so, why did he do so much work on nuclear weapons and missiles? And does anyone out there know that Dyson is a devoted Presbyterian?

The 2004 Tarski biography discusses the affair between Georg Kreisel and Dyson's first wife, Verena Huber, who went on to be quite friendly with Tarski himself.

Only today did I read that Freeman was the son of composer George, one of whose works I have performed. George Dyson was a solid workaday tonal composer, not much performed nowadays, and probably destined to be forgotten. The son far, far outstrips the father.202.36.179.65 10:18, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Could we please reserve this talk page for discussion of the article? — goethean ॐ 20:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

"Dyson says (20 minutes into a video) that he used the word "artificial biosphere" in the article meaning a habitat, not a shape. Imaginitive science fiction writers (specifically Olaf Stapledon) then expanded on what Dyson says was really his humor tacked on at the end of the article. Dyson says it should really be called the Stapledon Sphere". When your talking about this and Olaf Stapledon you say it was written in 1960 but Olaf Stapledon died in 1950 so doesnt this need a better explaination

Olaf Stapledon came up with his, similar, concept earlier than Dyson did in the book Star Maker. As he wrote this in 1937 he couldn't have been basing it off anything Dyson said unless Dyson thought it up when he was 14 and somehow managed to tell Stapledon. (This seems unlikely) However Bob Shaw had a Dyson sphere in his book Orbitsville and in his case he was inspired by Dyson.--T. Anthony 06:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay I dealt with that.--T. Anthony 06:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added a number of juicy quotes from Dyson re space exploration & colonization, and genetic engineering. I'll get back to the article itself when I have Dyson's books at hand.

Pete Tillman 01:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Ethnicity

this is actually a CITIZENSHIP issue, not ethnicity - his nationality/ethnicity is English - nationality=ethnicity - not citizenship, which is a legal status — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.9.62 (talk) 01:37, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

I note the intro states he is "British-American", I doubt this is how he would describe himself, at least in "From Eros to Gaia" he repeatedly states he is from England, not Britain. Ideally I'd like to remove the ethnicity altogether from the intro, a man with such a hatred of nationalism as he had would probably prefer to be described as a world citizen if anything.

Anyway, are there any sources saying he declares himself "British-American"? If not we should go with "English-American" or remove it altogether (my preferred option). - FrancisTyers · 10:55, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Dyson is as American as he is English. This needs to be changed. He is an American citizen and has lived in the US for most of his life. He often refers to the US and America as "we". A lot of sources list him as an American physicist only. Like britannica.

[1]

Savagedjeff (talk) 05:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Article now describes him as "an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, of British origin". I presume from this that he has taken Amrican citzenship. Anyone know when? It's a thing worth mentioning. Otherwise he would surely be a British theoretical physicist who has done most of his work in the USA.Nickpheas (talk) 12:46, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

This is not addressed in the article. If he was an American citizen, it needs to be referenced properly. Otherwise, he was an Englishman working in the States. 50.111.9.62 (talk) 01:33, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Workshop page for expanding this article

It would be good to have more about Dyson's views, scientific and otherwise. He is one of the great thinkers of our time, IMHO (although I disagree with him strongly on the urgency of climate change). His views require some context and explanations, so I'd rather not add them randomly. I'm starting a workshop page here for working on them. Please add to:

/Freeman Dyson's Views

- Clayoquot ^Sound 05:24, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Category: Global warming skeptics

Of course as a scientist, Dyson is skeptical about everything. Yes, he has questioned the models of climate change and, yes, he has said we have bigger problems. However, his own words are include, I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does." We have to be conservative when assigning categories to living people. Kla'quot 18:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that including people into categories should be biased - or "conservative", as you say. I think you misunderstand what it means to be a global warming skeptic - look at this page. Prof Dyson fits in between others very smoothly. Concerning your comment that a scientist is skeptical about everything - well, yes, this is the point of being a scientific skeptic. If someone is not a global warming skeptic, it means that he is not a scientific skeptic in the climate context. The number of the people who have abandoned the scientific method in the context of the climate is huge, these people are very irrational, but Freeman Dyson is not one of them. He is a global warming skeptic, and your out-of-context quote about "causing problems" can't change anything about it. He has opinions very much like I have, and I am a clear skeptic. The models can't be trusted, the media hysteria about it is scientifically unfounded and exaggerated, and the very concept of focusing on the global character of the climate, instead of the local research, is fundamentally flawed. This is global warming skepticism. I ask someone who reads these sentences to return the category. --Lumidek 19:36, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Please be mindful of WP:COI when assigning people you believe agree with you to categories. Michaelbusch 19:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd be more comfortable with it if the page Category:Global warming skeptics listed its criteria for inclusion. The category currently includes right-wing politicians, creationists, etc. whose skepticism is on a wholly different level from Dyson's. We are required by WP:BLP to be careful about including information about a living person that can be seen as negative. Kla'quot 20:03, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that only extremely unreasonable people would think that it is negative to be a global warming skeptic. And the list of global warming skeptics is mostly list of rather exceptional decent people, scientists, economists, journalists, former US presidents, Czech presidents, and so forth. Not sure what "creationists" are being discussed here. Concerning Michael Busch: I am absolutely certain that I am not violating any rules, and your indication otherwise is an unsubstantiated insult. I am just emphasizing that there is a mistake on Freeman Dyson's page caused by people who have an agenda, as they admitted, and I ask someone else to correct the error later when the dust settles. --Lumidek 19:13, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I was not implying that you were violating the rules. I was simply requesting that you be mindful of them. Michaelbusch 20:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Your claims about global warming and climate are uninformed and factually erroneous, and that is affecting your descriptions of Dyson. Rejecting the scientific consensus is not scientific skepticism, it's crackpottery. As Dyson admitted, "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much" -- his calling it "propaganda" is intellectually dishonest, as is his stated basis for his objections: "but it's rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have" -- which is purely ad hominem ... and is the sort of skewed crackpot perspective that is often seen from uninformed ideologues whining about the reactions of people who actually know what they are talking about. Jibal (talk) 01:28, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

The page Global_warming_skeptic divides such skeptics into 4 categories: 1 The Earth is not warming -- 2 The Earth is warming but the cause is unknown -- 3 The Earth is warming but mostly due to natural processes -- 4 Global warming is good for human society.

Not one of these matches up to the quote from Dyson here. His skepticism seems to consist in believing that other (very serious) problems are more pressing. OTOH, in support of Lumidek, Dyson recently described himself as a global warming skeptic:

"Freeman admitted he was a skeptic on global warming. His problem was not change in the climate. 'In the long view we ARE changing the climate.' He felt that climate was hugely complex, that we understand very little of it and many people are reducing this unknown complexity into one data point -- the average temperature somewhere. Until we understand what kind of changes we are making in our 'solutions' he says he believes the best action on global climate change right now is inaction." [2]

Maybe the solution is to create a new category of skeptic tailored to what Dyson himself believes? We could all agree that Dyson is pretty unique. betsythedevine 13:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I have emailed Freeman concerning this matter. He does not object to being called a gloabl warming skeptic, but as you say his views are heretical from many different viewpoints, so creating him his own subcategory would work. Michaelbusch 16:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

How about a new category "Critics of climate change models" or the existing category Category:Climate change assessment and attribution?Kla'quot 05:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I rather like the last one, but that seems to be reserved for the ICCC and reports on climate change. Michaelbusch 06:05, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

On second thought... Wikipedia:Categorization says, "Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category." It also says, "An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used as categories become less effective the more there are on any given article." Dyson is in nineteen categories already. If we were to add more categories, there are many that are way more pertinent to his interests, considering his views on disarmament, scientific research, education, the environment, women in science, biotechnology... But honestly, we should be pruning that category list vigorously, not adding to it. Kla'quot 06:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree, though I'm sympathetic to the argument that skeptic != derogatory.

Cheers, Pete Tillman 15:43, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I've returned the category. See another quote by Dyson here [3]. "Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models." I think it's fair to say that he doesn't believe that the warming is "primarily" man-made, and more importantly, he questions whether the warming will actually exist in the future. He is a self-described skeptic, and he is treated as one by the promoters of the global warming theory, see [4], [5]. --Lumidek 15:41, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Aren't both of those articles the same thing? RussNelson 17:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry if someone has already seen it. But is there any controversy about the statement that Dyson's opinions about the climate are more or less identical to other skeptics such as Michael Crichton? What's exactly the difference? I think that the attempt to remove the category from Freeman Dyson is an attempt of proponents of the global warming theory to pretend that skepticism among well-known scientists is smaller than it actually is. --90.176.185.73 07:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me that Dyson is skeptical of the conclusion that the most serious problem facing the world today is global warming. When you get old, you've experienced a lot of idiots running around saying "The End Is Near" and at some point you say "Well, no, it isn't." RussNelson 17:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Here we are seven years later and we are still here. Freeman Dyson is being quoted as he is now 90 years old. Do a Google-search on [CO2 plants freeman dyson 2014] for many hits, including [6] and a three minute video of Dyson explaining about science. — Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 20:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I think that this discussion keeps going sideways and is missing the central trouble: the way the first section reads, there's a long third paragraph that functions as a conclusion (however you think it *should* be read, it's going to be read as a conclusion), a typical intelligent reader would skim through the opening and conclude that Dyson must be one of *those* guys, and file him in the wastebasket with Seitz and Sanger. Myself, I don't think it does a *great* job of even summarizing Dyson's opinions-- which I suspect shifted quite a bit over time, Dyson was never the kind-of guy who refuses to revise his ideas. My take would be he argued it would be too expensive to go after global warming now, and we should await further technical breaktrhoughs (his example being genetic engineering of plants to lock-up carbon). I don't see much of this in that paragraph.

Anyway: there ought to be a mention of his opinions (whether "skeptic" or "heretic" or whatever) in the lead, but the discussion of what precisely they were should be held off until much later in the article. -- Doom (talk) 19:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Dyson's views on nationalism

In the opening paragraph, the article presently reads: "He is a lifelong opponent of nationalism..."

I just finished rereading the Stewart Brand and Monte Davis interviews, my own notes on some of his books, other online resources, and thumbing through Disturbing the Universe, which happens to be the only Dyson book at hand. I don't find any support for such a bald statement. Am I missing something? Surely there should be some documentation in the article for this.

Similarly, "... and proponent of nuclear disarmament and international cooperation" seems so oversimplified as to be cartoonish. I know we're struggling here to present an accurate summary of Dyson's complex views...

Perhaps we need a more neutral statement to replace this sentence.
Pete Tillman 05:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

On English academics

The article seems to imply he thinks English academics are "gloomy", when the cite provided says he thinks that of all Western academics. Why is England singled out?

"Gloomy" is an adjective that reflects someone's point of view. It has no objective value in a sentence. Maybe some English academics are gloomy, maybe some are merry, maybe some are cheerful. It depends on when you look at them. Who can get inside their minds and know for sure what mood they are in?Lestrade (talk) 00:01, 2 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Dyson's Transformation?

Dyson also has some credits in Elementary number theory. His concept "Dyson's transform" led to one of the most important lemmas of Olivier Ramaré's theorem that every even integer is a sum of at most six primes.

I think the above should read, "...that every even integer can be written as a sume of at most six primes."

It seems to imply that no even integer is a sum of seven primes, for example. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 20.132.68.133 (talk) 21:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Done. Michaelbusch 21:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Dyson's media appearances

I'm responding to the inclusion of the Wild River Review article (external link and biographical note added). I'm new to Wikipedia so if there is a better way to post this please advise. Mr. Dyson is socially aware of how science should be used and encouraged. Knowing something about his parents background is useful. His parents were not scientists. His mother was socially active. The WWR article/interview illuminates some of the reasons he's socially active, some of the things he'd like to see science do, one of the projects he's working on (Quarkpark - finished now) to make science more accessible and why he loves mathematics. josephglantz@yahoo.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by Josephglantz (talk • contribs) .

The problem is that Freeman gives so many interviews that we can't possibly include all of them. So a reference that doesn't provide substantial new information shouldn't be added. See Wikipedia:Notability and WP:BLP. Michaelbusch (talk) 18:44, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Nuclear weapons design.

I do not believe Dyson ever worked on the development of nuclear weapons - he was, as the article reflects, a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament.

Dyson has/had close friendships and working relationships with notable physicists who worked on nuclear weapons, such as Ted Taylor and Feynman, and worked on several famous pursuits in nuclear engineering during his time at General Atomics, including Project Orion and the TRIGA, so that's perhaps where the confusion arises from.

I think he might have briefly visited the Livermore Lawrence lab, after working with Taylor at General Atomics, and he might have investigated nuclear explosive design for Orion use - but I doubt very strongly that he ever contributed to the development of nuclear explosives as weapons systems. AWeishaupt (talk) 23:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Surrender followed, but was not caused by, bombs

In answering Edge.org's annual question [7], Freeman Dyson has made an unusual assertion. In spite of Emperor Hirohito's own words, as broadcast by radio to his people, Dyson claims that the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan did not contribute to its unconditional surrender. Hirohito declared,"…the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization. Such being the case, how are We to save the millions of Our subjects, or to atone Ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors? This is the reason why We have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the Joint Declaration of the Powers." Dyson proposes the notion that the imminent shortage of rice had more of an effect than the bombs. Does this recent statement diminish or increase Dyson's credibility? Lestrade (talk) 23:57, 1 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

The use of the A-Bombs by the US in WWII is somewhat political now. It would be mere rhetoric to say that the bombs were irrelevant to the surrender, IMO, but there were certainly other contributing factors; the biggest is that the USSR had recently begun to invade China and Korea and people had to think about whether they wanted to be conquered by the US or by Stalin (e.g. during Germany's final days some groups fighting against the Soviets on the eastern front retreated west, so as to surrender to American and British troops, hoping for better treatment). There won't be an easy answer to this but I suggest it is better to argue over which contributing factors were more significant, rather than say Japan surrendered solely for any one reason. The recent coup attempt may have influenced the Emperor's decisions also. It's much easier to second guess decisions in such a difficult situation, than to make them. Pete St.John (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

My father was in the army that was going to be transported from Europe to the Pacific in the winter of 1945. He and a few others were of the opinion that the two atomic bombs allowed them to return home in early 1946. Wasn't that naïve?Lestrade (talk) 20:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Naive? no. The purpose of the bombs, the intent, was certainly to shorten the war, and Japan surrendered shortly afterwards, so it was perfectly reasonable at the time to construe causality. IMO it's political revisionism to assert the bombs were irrelevant to the surrender, by people who fear that any perceived past utilty of the bomb would encourage future use; but it's also good history to broaden context, and many other things influenced such huge decisions, such as the effective blockade from Japan's losses at sea, the pending invasion from Russia, the coup, who knows what all. The only naive thing is thinking that globe-spanning, generation-spanning, multinational, multicultural, wars involving millions of combatants and untold thousands of politicians, is simple. Pete St.John (talk) 17:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Well said. But I'm not sure you're right about the purpose of the bombs. The stated purpose may have been to fight Japan and end the war, the real purpose might or might not have been to intimidate the Soviet Union. Richard Peterson 75.45.126.207 (talk) 19:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan allowed the Japanese government to surrender without 'losing face' - 'face' (pride or self esteem against one's 'social inferiors' - the opposite of shame) was/is very important to the Oriental cultures, and because of it Japan's government would not have felt able to do that most shameful of things in the Japanese military's eyes, i.e., surrender. The bombs, because of their obvious overwhelming power, gave them the excuse they needed to surrender without losing face. Certain members of Japan's ruling classes were putting out peace-feelers before the bombs were dropped, but the remaining fanatical militarists who made up the Japanese government (and who had started Japan's entry in to the war in the first place) had to be overcome. The bombs gave these fanatics a reasonable excuse for giving up.

When the Japanese radio announced the surrender after the bombs were dropped the radio statement mentioned " ... an honourable peace...", and an honourable peace was what was most important to the Japanese military at the time.

BTW, 'loss of face' was the reason so many Japanese officers and men committed ritual suicide, Seppuku.

The atomic bombs made Japan realise that surrender was the less painful of the two options of surrendering or fighting on, whilst Rooosevelt's unilateral announcement of the demand for 'unconditional surrender' of Germany had the opposite effect, making the Germans fight-on longer then they perhaps might have, because the military opposition to Hitler that might have helped to depose him thought Germany had little to gain by ending the war sooner, the resulting peace being 'terrible' no matter what they did - "Enjoy the War, as the Peace will be terrible". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.57.101 (talk) 09:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Pauli Exclusion

I have trouble understanding the 3rd paragraph under "Career", that the Pauli Exclusion Principle is the reason, or a bigger reason, that macroscopic solid objects don't merge, vs electric repulsion: "Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between electrons and nuclei that is responsible for two wood blocks that are left on top of each other not coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macrosopic normal force." The reason that is confusing is that many lay persons (such as myself) imagine the objects (such as wood blocks) as mostly empty, e.g. that the ratio of the diameter of a nucleus to the diameter of a nodal surface (roughly speaking) is very small; so there seems plenty of room for atoms of two objects to move next to each other, except for electrical repulsion. Can something more be said here, to explain it better? Should I ask at the Pauli Exclusion page? (but they don't seem to mention this effect). Thanks, Pete St.John (talk) 19:13, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The article is wrong when it asserts that the Pauli Exclusion Principle generates a force. A principle is a conceptual rule that humans create to explain their experiences. A force is an assumed physical source of motion. There is no influence between concepts and physical motions. Physicists like to misapply words in order to impress non–physicists. This is an old tradition that goes back to the time when Egyptian hieratic priests maintained power over demotic non–priests or lay people. There is nothing that can be done to compel scientists to explain themselves in conventional language. If you protest that their words make no sense, they will reply that you are simply incapable of understanding them. A statement such as "the Pauli Exclusion Principle generates a force" cannot be proven wrong. It is expected to be taken on the authority of eminent, usually Nobel Prize–winning, physicists.Lestrade (talk) 19:57, 2 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Every profession has jargon. Many mathematicians, such as myself, regret the use of the term imaginary for complex numbers; it's confused countless undergraduates but it's embedded tradition now. When you punch a wall, your hand will hurt; the kinetic energy was generated by the ATP in the muscles in your arm and shoulder, but the wall is relevant to the experience :-) so can be considered as a force (displacing your fist). Physicists aren't trying to fool us, but like all of us, as the generations go by we gradually come up with somewhat better ways of explaining things in words, all of which are imperfect. Pete St.John (talk) 17:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It is not using jargon to say that the Pauli Exclusion Principle generates a force. It is an ignorant error. Physicists delight in ambiguity and paradox. Instead of creating new words to signify new concepts, they appropriate existing words that already have a conventional meaning, regardless of the confusion that results. Examples are color, flavor, (mem)brane, dark, spectrum, spin, atom, work, entanglement, and quantum. At least Gell–Mann borrowed the non–word quark from James Joyce. That is the exception that confirms the rule.Lestrade (talk) 19:34, 3 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

I'm not a physicist, but I'll try to be more specific. Your reasoning is falacious, as follows: you say:

The article is wrong when it asserts that the Pauli Exclusion Principle generates a force. A principle is a conceptual rule that humans create to explain their experiences. A force is an assumed physical source of motion. There is no influence between concepts and physical motions...."

You are confusing the name of a thing, with the thing. The word "Principle" in the phrase "Pauli Exclusion Principle" is like "law" in "Law of Gravity". It isn't the concept that generates acceleration, it's the thing which our concept helps us grasp. The Law of Gravity explains something real, which really makes apples fall to the ground. The Paul Exclusion Principle explains something real, which really prevents two things from being in the same place at the same time. Pete St.John (talk) 19:57, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

The article states that the exclusion principle generates a force. This brings us back to Medieval Realism, according to which the exclusion principle would be an entity that is an independent agency which is reponsible for the occurrence of forces. As such, the exclusion principle would exist in a world or realm of ontological being that is separate and apart from physical objects, including human brains. The article doesn't say that the exclusion principle explains something real. The article implies that the exclusion principle is something real that generates some other real thing.Lestrade (talk) 20:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)Lestrade

Consider this parallel: "Gravity" (the word) describes gravity (the force of nature). The Law of Gravity does not make apples fall, gravity does; the Law of Gravity describes gravity. Newton did not discuss the word "gravity" or the phrase "Law of Gravity" as he wrote about gravity, not about the words that describe gravity. Now, faking parallel nomenclature to minimize confusion, let's say: The Pauli Exclusion Effect causes displacement, and the Pauli Exclusion Principle describes the effect. The article isn't about the nomenclature (which may be imperfect pedagically), it describes the effect. Gravity is a concept, and concepts aren't physical forces, nonethelss gravity is a physical force; you have to distinguish the use of the word, from the word, and what the use of the word describes, etc. Please think about a good way to say that yes, Gravity works, despite the fact that The Law of Gravity is a mere concept; then use the same reasoning to apply to the Pauli Exclusion Principple. Pete St.John (talk) 20:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Off topic chat

I have a comment to make. Lestrade appears to think that physicists have a unique relationship with language, a careless and selfish relationship, and that no one else would even dream of appropriating, adapting and repurposing words as new demands arise; that the most honorable thing anyone can do with language is to surround each word with its own mighty wall of unassailable convention; that, by rights, there should today be no such languages as Spanish, French and Italian, since they are descendants of Latin, which should've been kept pure, untainted by people who actually -use- language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.60 (talk) 01:02, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

Work on the exclusion principle

"Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between electrons and nuclei..."

Er, there is an electromagnetic attraction between electrons and nuclei. Perhaps "electromagnetic repulsion between atoms" was meant? -CKL —Preceding comment was added at 16:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Use of Cquotes

I notice that this article is using loads of cquotes, which according to Template:Cquote are "meant for pull quotes", i.e. "to lead readers into an article and to highlight a key topic". Also according to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Quotations, cquote should only be used for pull quotes, not for quotations. A proper template for quotations is quote or quotation. Ulifahrenberg (talk) 11:58, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

cheap fuels

″The three components of the vision are all essential: the sun to provide energy where it is needed, the genome to provide plants that can convert sunlight into chemical fuels cheaply and efficiently...″

well, it's happening Read this article

This page is not a blog; it's purpose is for improving the associated article on Freeman Dyson. And please sign your comments. -- Jibal (talk) 01:37, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Dyson's Family

I'm completely baffled by this statement.

On Esther Dyson, his daughter: “ The main advantage she had was being neglected. We had two other children [then], one older and one younger, who were real problems. She wasn't a problem, and so she didn't get much attention. She always knew what she wanted, and she was very quiet and easygoing.[7]

I am not questioning that he said it, but as far as I can tell Esther Dyson is his first child and also her mother's first child. Was there another? Otherwise, Dyson is simply mistaken (or someone has misquoted him). Esther is two years older than George. Who would Esther's older sibling have been? Eperotao (talk) 16:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

You're right, it's puzzling. I confirmed the quote is at the cited source. I'll just remove it, since this is a pretty quote-heavy article. Best, Pete Tillman (talk) 03:51, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Esther had/has an older half sister from her mother's first marriage (and according to the body, but not box, of this article, four more from her father's second marriage). DV Henkel-Wallace (talk) 21:32, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

More clarification on the three children Dyson is talking about can be found at Verena_Huber-Dyson#Children. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Global Warming

I think the extensive entry on Dyson's views on global warming are excessive. His views on global warming should take up a couple of lines. If people want to read the New York Times profile, they can read it at the New York Times. Dyson's views on global warming are not the most important part of his productive life. Global warming is not his area of expertise. You might as well quote him extensively on what movies he likes this year. I advise drastically cutting this section. Eperotao (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree and have started to cut it. It's still too long though but would like to see what others think before cutting more. — Aldaron • T/C 22:33, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Dyson himself agrees: "...I am not so much interested in global warming. He [the NYT reporter] portrayed me as sort of obsessed with the subject, which I am definitely not. To me it is a very small part of my life. I don’t claim to be an expert. I never did. I simply find that a lot of these claims that experts are making are absurd..." [8]

It is interesting that he once did work in climate studies -- a fact that should be added to the article.

I think the climate change section is now about the right size, but could be sharpened up, perhaps with quotes from the above interview. --Pete Tillman (talk) 19:29, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Lenght of the section in the main body of the article seems roughly right, but gloabal warming views are taking about a fourth of the whole introductory section. That is excessive. English isn't my first language and I haven't made edits for a decade, but maybe somebody else could reduce or event cut completely the part from intro.RNAWES12 (talk) 02:59, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Tyson’s views on global warming are very important obviously because he was one of the preeminent physicists in the world for decades. He did not believe increased Co2 levels are driving warming and in fact felt there was an overall net benefit additional levels because of the associated greening of the planet. His views are documented in print and video tens of times and they need to be properly recorded. The question of whether he was correct is irrelevant. JjlPierpoint (talk) 11:59, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

This is a fallacious argument from authority. Dyson acknowledged that "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much". The only real relevance of his views on the matter is as a demonstration of how such fallacious appeals to authority work, and that even a highly intelligent and accomplished physicist can be a crackpot on specific subjects. Jibal (talk) 01:45, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Article rework needed?

This is both one of the best and worst articles I've come across on Wiki to date. While certainly containing a wealth of information about Freeman Dyson, it's at times incredibly unpolished, and at other times unbearable to read. Firstly, the biographical portion is difficult at best. Half of the personal information is just about his family, and the other half about his personality. Additionally, the "career" portion is simply a chronological list that is no more detailed than a resume. To dramatically improve this portion, the personal/career parts should be merged and re-organized via chronological event, or kept in its current dichotomy but heavily re-worked. Most all of the parts in the "Career" section could stand to have 2-3 sentences, and it should be written in a series of paragraphs. Additionally, I wish we could write more about the events of his personal life instead of just how other people viewed his personality. Secondly, this article has far too many quotes in it. An encyclopedia, by practical tradition, is a summary written by indirectly quoting primary and secondary sources. Instead, we have an article with little to no summary, but an immense wealth of direct quotes from the primary and secondary sources. Keeping a few of these quotes would be fine, but most all of these quotes should be paraphrased and extrapolated upon, with a citation linking to where these quotes are coming from. I'd volunteer to do as much copy editing as I can, but a lot of these problems need content editing as well, which I'm not suited to do. Unless people feel that this would be bad, I'll start copy editing in a week or two. --06:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)Not12x (talk)

I think the reason there are a lot of quotes in the article is that Dyson is unusually -- almost uniquely --articulate, for a scientist of his stature, and he's very quotable. In general, I think it would weaken the article to paraphrase his quotes, which would almost certainly weaken the language, and not convey Dyson's views as accurately as his own words.

So far as copy-editing goes, I know Dyson and his work pretty well (though I'm a geologist, not a physicist), so I could backstop you there. I hadn't looked at the article in awhile -- I'm glad to see someone shortened the overblown climate-change section. Dyson's views on this are given at [9], which I'll be adding to the links. Required reading as a followup to the NYT profile, which was agenda-driven and quite misleading. Cheers --Pete Tillman (talk) 18:55, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

The second paragraph in the introduction needs a complete rewrite. It is, essentially, one extremely-long sentence. Such run-on sentences tend to turn people away from the subject matter because it runs on and on without a break. Just as speakers must take a breath now and then, so does the reader, who needs a mental breath occasionally. Erzahler (talk) 11:43, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Nationality in infobox

Is Dyson actually a U.K. national? He holds dual-citizenship? 78.105.234.140 (talk) 09:52, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Special:Contributions/217.218.247.4 Hmmm? 78.105.234.140 (talk) 16:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

He is quoted as saying that he has 'abjured his allegiance'. This presumably means he has given up UK nationality.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 11:48, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Hans Bethe as doctoral advisor?

Should this be added even though Dyson never finished? I mean, Bethe was his doctoral advisor wasn't he?

Savagedjeff (talk) 14:15, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Too many quotes?

This article, at the time of writing, contains 21 quotes from Dyson, which make up a considerable portion of the article. While there's no specific limit on how many quotes to include, I think this is too many - Wikipedia is not Wikiquote. Many of these quotes are included to show Dyson's position on a certain matter, but it shouldn't be necessary to do so - in most cases we can simply describe or summarise his views rather than having to quote them directly. In fact, this article does exactly that in a few places, like 'Dyson opposes the Vietnam war, the Gulf War, and the invasion of Iraq. He supported Barack Obama during the election and The New York Times has described him as a political liberal.' This approach could be extended to make this article look less like a list of quotes. Other quotes could perhaps be removed entirely - what exactly is the purpose of Freeman Dyson#The role of failure and Freeman Dyson#On English academics? They don't seem to add anything to his biography.

For those quotes are to be retained, the {{cquote}} template should not be used - it specifically advises not to use it for block quotes in article text, for which the smaller {{quote}} is preferred. Robofish (talk) 00:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I think the reason there are a lot of quotes in the article is that Dyson is unusually -- almost uniquely -- articulate, for a scientist of his stature, and he's very quotable. In general, I think it would weaken the article to paraphrase his quotes, which would almost certainly weaken the language, and not convey Dyson's views as accurately as his own words. Cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 00:56, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I will go further, I thought this "quotefarm" tag was pretty silly, so I deleted it. There's no reason you shouldn't use a bunch of quotes if it makes it a better article. I would take it under advisement that the article might "flow" better if the quotes were embedded in some more explanatory text, but it hardly deserves to be dismissed as a "quotefarm". -- Doom (talk) 02:14, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

I looked through the article (first time in awhile) for quotes & format. I disagree that the {{cquote}} is being misused (tho some pruning wouldn't hurt) -- again, because Dyson is such a quotable writer, I think we're justified in calling out more quotes than would ordinarily be recommended. --Pete Tillman (talk) 02:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

---

An editor deleted all the cquotes, citing policy -- but see discussion above. I restored them in the "Concepts" section, because I think it makes a better-looking & flowing article, but see what you think. Note that it's always a good idea to discuss a major format change to stable text.

I left the others as blockquotes per the new edit, because I just have a few minutes free, and to give others a chance to compare the formats. Pete Tillman (talk) 21:44, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I agree with the original poster; there are too many quotes, and we have wikiquotes for a reason. I also question (unfortunately) the current assessment. Viriditas (talk) 08:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Paper on hydogen atom

Some 30 years (or so) ago I came across a paper by Dyson in the Physical Review in which he discuused the Green function for the simplest atom - taking advantage of the additional symmetry (over and above spherical symmetry) implied bt the existence of the Runge-Lenz vector since it is inmany resspects typical of Dyson's way of approaching problems - might it not deserve a mention? Hair Commodore (talk) 12:01, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Dyson as "creator" of operations research

It seems to me that the following is incorrect:

"He then worked as an analyst for RAF Bomber Command at RAF Wyton for the remainder of World War II, where he would come to create what would be later known as operational research.[7]"

This suggests that, at the tender age of +- 17 years old, Dyson single-handedly "created" the discipline of OR. As a PhD graduate in the 70's in this domain, it was certainly not my impression that the discipline was "created" by a single individual. I was under the impression that, if anything, it was "created" by the British military establishment. It was under their initiative that groups of scientists were gathered together to address problems relating to military operations---hence the nomenclature "operations research" (or, in the UK, "operational research"). The idea was that such scientists would attack the problem at hand using the domain skills that they had acquired in their specific field of science: physics, maths, or what-have-you.

Although I have never heard of Dyson's work in this regard, it is possible that (even at the age of 17) he might have been one of the scientists who engaged in this "research into military operations".

I notice that reference [7] renders the facts differently: It reports Dyson as saying: "I began work in the Operational Research Section (ORS) of the British Royal Air Force's Bomber Command on July 25, 1943. I was 19 years old, fresh from an abbreviated two years as a student at the University of Cambridge. "

Thus, even by this rendering, he was no "creator" of OR. Moreover, this was in 1943, and not, as ambiguously suggested in the text, in 1939-1941.CarlosChio (talk) 07:16, 28 February 2010 (UTC)CarlosChico

The person with the best claim to have originated Operations Research is almost certainly A.P. Rowe whilst he was working at Bawdsey Research Station (BRS) before the war. The technique was originated by Rowe to improve the management of information arising from the early Chain Home early warning radar system, and to allow this information to be passed on to the end users (the RAF fighter squadrons) in the most efficient and useful form. The BRS later became the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE), and civilian OR Boffins from TRE were frequent visitors to some RAF operational stations, such as RAF Defford. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.4.57.101 (talk) 09:33, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Helios (propulsion system)

Helios (propulsion system) i belive is the propulsion system that makes sense its a intresting way of creating energy into propulsion. (from other sources they have already made a type of engine on aireoplanes) using nuclear fission or fusion or even both to create massive amounts of energy to propulsion, would be the "future of are future" in space travel and or other types of travel. i can understand why the idea was shelfed but maybe using different idea's desgins and materials would inprove the chance of its success. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.8.122.2 (talk) 02:31, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

External links

About Dyson

I notice that there are a number of external links on this page, e.g.

• "The Scientist as Rebel", 2005 interview at Wild River Review

• NPR interview of Freeman Dyson, audio, All Things Considered, November 2, 2004

• Google video: interviewer: Robert Wright, video, 44:55, June 30, 2001

Please consider adding this link to an in depth video of Freeman Dyson telling his life story. The video is freely available on the Web of Stories website (http://webofstories.com):

• Freeman Dyson video at Web of Stories

Fitzrovia calling (talk) 09:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

One dimensional Ising model

I don't know Dyson's work in this area but I believe the 1-D Ising model does not have a phase transition.Paulhummerman (talk) 01:22, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Growing space habitats

It seems like the addition about growing space habitats [diff] needs a reference. HyperCapitalist (talk) 18:20, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Dyson's Views on Space Exploration

There are two issues with this particular section. First, the existing quote is slightly out of context, misleading the reader to believe that Dyson suggests that there may be fish on Europa. Including the lines directly following would clarify that he recognizes this to be a "fanciful notion":

"Freeze-dried fish orbiting Jupiter is a fanciful notion, but nature in the biological realm has a tendency to be fanciful. Nature is usually more imaginative than we are. [...] To have the best chance of success, we should keep our eyes open for all possibilities."

Second, the quote itself is less about general space exploration as it is specifically about the search for extraterrestrial life on Europa. I suggest that the section be expanded and that existing quote be included as a supplement to - not a summary of - Dyson's views on space exploration.

CA Jim (talk) 08:30, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

References

Poor article

This article is of poor quality, badly-written, not written from a neutral point of view, emphasizing ludicrous things like Dyson's lack of a Nobel prize (what on earth would Dyson be awarded a Nobel prize for?), not objective, generally a poor article. JoshuSasori (talk) 22:20, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

Just for the record, many of his peers in physics thought that his work on Quantum Electrodynamics should have been awarded a Nobel. Freeman, on the other hand, has denied that it was seminal enough for the Prize. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.223.130.32 (talk) 00:47, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Game Theory

Dyson has recently co-authored an important paper (with William H Press) on the Prisoner's Dilemma problem in Game Theory. It is said, by people who claim to understand it, to overturn existing assumptions about optimal strategies in 'iterated' games. Press, a biologist, is the lead author, while Dyson has been quoted as saying he 'just did the math'. I do not understand the paper myself, but in due course presumably someone who does understand it should add a section.109.157.151.8 (talk) 17:01, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you have secondary sources that cover this? IRWolfie- (talk) 18:43, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

This seems to be breakthrough paper. The secondary sources: http://edge.org/conversation/on-iterated-prisoner-dilemma and more precise summary in PNAS "Extortion and cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma" by Alexander J. Stewart and Joshua B. Plotkin. To cite: "Press and Dyson (1) dramatically expand our understanding of this classic game by uncovering strategies that provide a unilateral advantage to sentient players pitted against unwitting opponents. By exposing these results, Press and Dyson have fundamentally changed the viewpoint on the Prisoner’s Dilemma, opening a range of new ossibilities for the study of cooperation." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.45.94.21 (talk) 14:36, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Dyson's politics a misfit? Not needed here?

In our Warfare and weapons section we have this statement:

He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election and The New York Times has described him as a political liberal.[6]

It seems a misfit there, and I don't think we ordinarily include political views of prominent scientists in their wikibios, unless they are also political activists. Comments? --Pete Tillman (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The epithet public intellectual applies to Dyson, so I think the political views are relevant. Issues like nuclear weapons and climate change are part of mainstream political debate. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:27, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

Global warming heresy

Dyson is well-aware that his "heresy" on global warming has been strongly criticized.

Yes, Dyson keeps asserting he is being pelted with rotten tomatoes for holding unpopular views, but is this really true? People do complain he is pushing hard on an already open door (researchers know models are inexact, yet they continue to improve). He often gets defensive during interviews, especially if you have the tenacity to press him on details. His interview with Steve Connor is most extraordinary. It appears he wants to be perceived as a heretic, and if you do not play along, by identifying areas of agreement, before pressing him for specifics on points of contention, he reacts badly. How many people have actually called him a heretic compared to the number of times he pronounces himself one. Has that number ever risen above 1? I get the same impression with his disapproval of Richard Dawkins. It's as though heresy is a badge of honour and Dyson is clumsily trying to pin his own. The sentence should be edited to read: ''Dyson says his "heresy" on global warming has been strongly criticized. — ThePowerofX 21:34, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Bicycle quote

I cannot find the quote in the cited article (Wired.com).

You can't possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works – it's even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.[48]Northfox (talk) 13:02, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Ooops, I found it, but it is on page seven in the wired.com page layout. Can/should this be mentioned/clarified in the ref [48]? http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.02/dyson.html?pg=7&topic=&topic_set= Northfox (talk) 13:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

About the long list of "Dyson" labeled discoveries and concepts

Dear Sir, Madam,

In your excellent wikipedia article on Freeman Dyson's outstanding contribution to physics and the long list of "Dyson labeled" discoveries and concepts it contents, I would like to add, to the benefit of the reader, the "Dysonian Line Shape" of ESR/EPR spectrum (Dyson F J 1955 Phys. Rev. 98 346) which all solid-state and condensed matter physicists would agree to consider as a major phenomenum and all experimentalists (chemists and physicists) would consider as a usefull technique.

This phenomenum is observed when doing ESR (Electron Spin Resonance, also known as EPR, Electron Paramagnetic Resonance) on conductive samples*.

In that case the ESR absorption line is not only motion-narrowed (as always when spins move or are coupled to moving species) but also becomes "dissymetrical" (assymetrical) instead of showing the classical symetrical shape of ESR lines (be it gaussian or Lorentzian or mixed).

• even if that conductivity in the samples makes it difficult to carry out the experiment with

a resonant cavity of the spectrometer becoming unbalanced and with an energy density within the sample that becomes close to zero as the microwaves are not propagated into the bulk because of the conductivity.

Freeman Dyson has been the first to give an interpretation of this assymetrical line by taking into account the movement of the charge carriers "in and out" of the (microwave)penetration skin of the metalic sample. The original article by F. Dyson makes the hypothesis of free conductive charge carriers bearing spins and is "model dependant".

The resulting Dysonian asymmetry in line shape is then characterized by a ratio of A/B, measuring the ratio of the amplitudes of the low magnetic field peak to the high magnetic field peak amplitudes. (let's remind here that ESR is obtained by radiating microwaves at fixed frequency to a sample which is submitted to a slowly varying magnetic field and that it is the derivative of the absorbtion curve which is recorded)

In the F. Dyson model of 1955 the finite penetration of microwaves in the sample (skin effect) results in a simple mixing of the absorption and dispersion components of a classical symmetric Lorentzian line. F. Dyson has in this original paper of 1955 shown that when the skin depth becomes smaller than the sample thickness (hence when the sample is not wholy penetrated by the wave)the assymmetric line shape can be attributed to the presence of a dispersive component in the line. Observations on thick and thin samples can then lead, according to some hypothesis, to the mobility of the charge carriers, which is a of great value when observing new materials, especially if scalling and percolation occurs.

Now when it comes to develop a special model to explain the ESR line shape of a particular material, it must be considered that the ESR absorption line is somehow the Fourrier Transform of the Spin Relaxation Curve in time. So to modelize the ESR curve means to modelize the relaxation of the spins. And in a conductive material it means to modelize the relaxation of moving spins (Doppler effect, dimentional diffusion etc), with spins entering the skin depth, some leaving it, the outgoing spins (in the Doppler viewpoint)being also the ones that leave the penetration skin and that become unvisible (as planes out of radar range) leading to a cutoff in the relaxation curve. Hence the shape of the line is very dependant on the physics of the spins movement and the first physicist to simplify this situation and to give a satisfactory solution for metals has been Freeman Dyson as soon as 1955 (let's remind here that the ESR effect was first imagined by Landau right before World war II and has been a reality after the war, using the radar technics developped at that time).

The assymetrical line effect explained by Dyson must not be confused with the Cyclotron Resonance (with or without Azbel-Kaner geometry), nor the De Haas - Van Alphen effect, both observable under magnetic field and microwave radiation as in ESR conditions, even if it is possible that all effects mix under certain circumstances.

The assymetrical line effect explained by Dyson has been so far observed in numerous conductors and semi-conductors and has been successfuly observed in and applied to "Conductive Polymers" in the 80's and 90's, leading to the measure of the charge carriers mobility (be it spin-less solitons as in Polyacetylene or spin-labelled polarons as in species such as Polypyrrole, Polythiophene and Polyaniline). To know more, see for instance authors such as : Christian Fitte, Alan Heeger (the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and Maxime Nechtschein. See also papers such as : Houze E, Nechtschein M and Pron A 1997 Phys. Rev. B56 12263. In conducting polymers scaling occurs with fast 1D conductivity along the chains (as seen by NMR relaxation experiments by Nechtschein and Al), slower 3D variable range hoping between the chains (as can be measured by ESR line assymetry) and finaly macroscopic percolation amongst insulating and conductive domains leading to the macroscopic conductivity measured by classical 4 probes. For this new class of condensed matter known as conductive (or conducting) polymers, the observation of Dysonian line shape of the ESR spectra has been of unvaluable support.

So for all the above mentioned reasons and the briefly given example I would suggest to add to the wikipedia pages on Freeman Dyson this "Dysonian Assymetrical ESR Line Shape" alo referred to as "Dyson Line" by experimentalists.

As I am not used to wikipedia editing, I thank you to contact me(if necessary)on my email at : bvilleret@aol.com

Yours faithfully

From : Bertrand Villeret, (Phd in physics) Editor in chief, ConsultingNewsLine — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.16.56.235 (talk) 01:52, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Dyson ESR Line

I have not seen any change concerning the "Dyson ESR Line" that I suggested to add to the already long list of concepts and effects bearing the name of Freeman Dyson. My document has been posted around 2013 (see section written below "Bicycle quote" at end of the Talk page). My remarks were mainly based on the work published by Dyson in the following paper : Dyson F. J. 1955 Phys. Rev. 98 346 (in the second part of volume 98). The physical review and the APS can probably help you get the paper quick if it is not available as an electronic document.

Regards

B. Villeret ( we are now 24 01 2014) bvilleret@aol.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.16.56.199 (talk) 00:45, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

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— Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.255.225.30 (talk) 00:02, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Hidden text

@Joel B. Lewis: In your edit summary you made the rather startling conclusion that only editors need to verify cited refs. Where did you get this idea from? Not mention of it in WP:RS or anywhere else I am aware of. Our readers may also want to verify, therefore I am arguing that we get rid of the hidden message and add it to the ref instead. I have now done this. However, the video doesn't work so I'm going to remove it. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs

If the interview had played and was essentially an interview with Dyson this would be a primary ref disguised as a secondary ref, and we have quite enough, and more than enough, of Dyson's direct opinions in primary refs. We need more secondary sources and IMO can't claim a video posted in Wire of Freemand Dyson speaking is a secondary source about Freeman Dyson unless verified in the text. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 16:49, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Actually the statement is verified in the text and thus there is no need to verify with the video. This is a secondary source without worrying about why the video doesn't work, and whether it is a regional issue. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 17:00, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

You may notice I’ve rewritten part of the opening and other parts relating to climate. It was inaccurate to state Dyson believed that global warming was “merely” caused by Co2 increases. In fact, he didn’t like the term global warming and although he felt c02 had some influence on warming he believed it was likely minimal. The sun, oceans, natural variability were much more important in his view and that fact was not apparent in the portions of the article attributed to climate. Obviously his views may be wrong, but those were his views and there are many, many citations which verify his views and I included 3 of them. Thanks. JjlPierpoint (talk) 11:49, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Concerns with the organization of the opening of the article

The third paragraph of the opening of the article written about Dyson's opinions on climate change seems to be awkwardly placed and seems to not belong in the opening without a change in wording. Does anyone else believe it be reworded or moved to the climate change section? H*10^8.5 (talk) 15:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Move to climate change section: The opening is supposed to summarize the rest of the article. So, no.

Change wording: Depends. What change of wording is that? --Hob Gadling (talk) 17:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

The whole idea of the opening is to sum up the contents of the article. The climate change addition was written by me recently to do that, so moving it to the section would be duplicating what is already there and would then mean the opening still failed to sum up the contents. We still don't sum up the overall contents well, what is needed is to expand the opening, summing up other bits of the contents of the article; his other views and expanding on his concepts too. As for changing the opening summary re climate change, I am obviously not willing to do that until you point out what you think is wrong with the wording @H*10^8.5:, you have criticized the wording in such general terms that it is impossible to figure out what you think is wrong with the climate change opening piece. I don't mind it being changed as long as the changes still offer a reasonable representation of the section on climate change but I do think we are better off expanding the opening to include the other concepts and views, and as I haven't finished my work on the article I am happy to do this as my personal time permits. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 13:44, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

@Hob Gadling: @RichardWeiss: Sorry for being vague in terms of my thoughts on the wording/organization of the opening. I figured the 3rd paragraph of the opening should be started off such that it flows better with the rest of the opening, by starting it with a sentence such as "Dyson is also notable for his opinions on climate change" or something similar. H*10^8.5 (talk) 19:20, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Okay, that doesn't sound controversial. I think the sooner the opening is expanded the better. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 06:38, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

2015 climate change op-ed in Boston Globe

Here's a nice, late summary of Dyson's views on climate change: "Misunderstandings, questionable beliefs mar Paris climate talks" https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/12/03/freeman-dyson-misunderstandings-questionable-beliefs-mar-paris-climate-talks/vG3oBrbmcZlv2m22DTNjMP/story.html Written in Dyson's exemplary clear and compact style. He will be missed. --Pete Tillman (talk) 15:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Bomber Command

Under 'Warfare and weapons', the article repeats Dyson's well-known claim that he (and Reuben Smeed, his immediate boss in the Operational Research Section at Bomber Command HQ) recommended removing two of the gun turrets from RAF heavy bombers as this would somehow make the aircraft go 50 mph faster and reduce the loss to enemy night fighters. Dyson grumpily blamed Basil Dickins, overall head of ORS, for not passing this suggestion on to the C-in-C Sir Arthur Harris even though it could supposedly have saved 'thousands' of lives. But it is a bit unhelpful to repeat this eccentric claim uncritically.

For one thing, Dyson says that removing two gun turrets would mean reducing the crew from seven to five. But presumably he means the front and mid-upper turrets (even though Halifaxes had already had the front turret removed and replaced with a Perspex nose cone and a single free-mounted gun, which helped with the Halifax's load-sensitivity but did not greatly increase the speed). As the seldom-used front guns of Lancasters and Halifaxes were manned by the bomb aimer, the crew would only have been reduced from seven to six, with the omission of the mid-upper gunner. This suggests that Dyson's understanding of bomber operations was slight. He based his view on a statistical finding that experienced crews suffered a similar loss rate to inexperienced crews, and thus he deduced that the gun turrets were useless, but that was simply an assumption that did not follow from the data. In half of all interceptions, the gunners saw the fighter coming and the bomber successfully evaded. In the other half, they didn't. It was a matter of luck.

For another thing, Dyson gives no rationale for the extraordinary '50 mph' claim. From July 1943, the month when Dyson joined Bomber Command HQ, civilianised Lancasters of Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada), with all their gun turrets replaced by streamlined fairings, were making regular mail, cargo and passenger flights across the Atlantic from Montreal (Dorval) to Glasgow (Prestwick) and back. The first flight, from Dorval on 22 July, reached Prestwick in 12hr 26min at an average 240 mph groundspeed. That was about the same as the airspeed of an armed Lancaster at cruise power after target with the bomb load gone. But it was presumably wind-assisted, since the wind over the North Atlantic normally blows east. Some flights took longer and it does not seem that the cargo-laden mail planes made much better airspeed than the 210 mph of a standard armed Lancaster before target. The Dorval-Prestwick record, in November 1944, was 10hr 15min, at an average groundspeed of just over 300mph after inital climb-to-height, but that was clearly the result of picking up a jetstream wind, which could well add 90 mph over actual airspeed. Canadian-built Lancasters for bomber service were delivered to Britain from August 1943 on the same route, with the gun positions similarly faired over (the turrets were fitted on arrival in Britain), and it is not recorded that they flew dramatically faster than operational armed bombers either. After the war, civilian Lancastrians, essentially still just turretless Lancasters with slightly better passenger accommodation, cruised at 210-230 mph on airline and Berlin Airlift operations. Dyson's much-repeated claim of gaining '50 mph' by deleting the front and mid-upper gun turrets (but not apparently the tail turret, with its heavy ammunition bins, even though the civilianised aircraft did have that turret deleted) appears to be fantasy. You might reduce fuel consumption and gain a little speed, but you would not gain 50 mph. Some Lancasters of 617 Squadron were flown with the front and mid-upper turrets removed and they did not go that much faster. In fact the speed gain was negligible.

In his writings, Dyson obsesses over the failure of ORS men such as himself to detect the threat of 'Schrage Musik' -- the upward-firing cannon fitted to German night fighters from mid-1943, allowing them to attack from directly below, where they could not be spotted. And Dyson was a member of ORS2, specifically responsible for bomber losses. The secret of Schrage Musik was only discovered in July 1944 when an inexperienced German pilot who had read his compass reciprocally landed his Ju 88G (a newly improved model with a cruise speed rather better than the 260 mph that Dyson imagined a de-gunned Lancaster could manage) at RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, thinking he was somewhere near Berlin. Dyson claimed it was 'too late to do anything about it' by then, which is false: many Lancasters not fitted with H2S radar had .50-calibre guns installed at a hatch in the ventral position to deter German pilots from that kind of attack, and Schrage Musik fell out of favour with the Luftwaffe. You really do not want to present yourself to a Browning .50-calibre firing directly down into your cockpit at about 50 metres' range. Dyson clearly felt great guilt over his failure to guess the existence of Schrage Musik. He mentions the previous intelligence clues, such as the accounts of bailed-out aircrew who evaded capture and were debriefed by one of his close colleagues at ORS. His fantasy that bomber losses could have been greatly reduced, if only Basil Dickins had taken up his naive proposal to remove gun turrets, was apparently a psychological coping mechanism to deal with that guilt. Khamba Tendal (talk) 20:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

This is currently one of the top UK results if you Google 'Freeman Dyson'. It's The Guardian and is presumably RS. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/08/raf-bomber-command-was-right-to-ignore-freeman-dysons-foolish-idea Incidentally, the Wiki article at present claims without citation that RAF losses in the Battle of Berlin during the winter of 1943-4 were 'catastrophic', which is false. Losses were running at an average of about 5%, which was the maximum sustainable. The losses declined after March 1944, partly because more RAF Mosquitos were sent out to hunt the German fighters, partly because bombing cut the Luftwaffe's fuel stocks, partly because of radar and radio jamming by 100 (Bomber Support) Group and partly because the Allied invasion of the Low Countries overran many of the enemy's early-warning stations and forward airfields, but quite largely because RAF bombers consistently shot down German night fighters at a higher percentage rate than vice versa -- a point seldom remarked on, and one that Freeman Dyson didn't have a clue about. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:25, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

What accent does he have?

What is his accent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzC1IRYN_Ps — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.40.222.90 (talk) 14:01, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

English (received pronunciation) NRPanikker (talk) 22:51, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Obituary stuff [in progress]

I haven't looked at the article in awhile. I didn't even know he had a last book! "Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters" (2018). Now high on my TBR list. Anyway, this is an omnium-gatherum of stuff from better obits, to consider for adds to the article. I haven't looked to see if any of these (one so far!) is already in use.

Arthur Jaffe, Harvard University: "I first met Freeman Dyson when I was a graduate student at Princeton almost 60 years ago. He already had a towering reputation, and was something of an enigma to my generation of students.

I recall that Dyson began his course on quantum theory by telling us, “If anyone tells you that they understand quantum theory, they are not telling the truth.” We were fascinated by his lectures, and so I invited him with a small group of friends for dinner. I remember him warning us that the biggest change in our lives would result from the economic development of China. ...

We will miss Dyson not only as a friend but as an unusual visionary, unafraid to challenge conventional thought whenever and wherever he could."

N.D. Hari Dass , Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, India, then a postdoc, worked with Dyson at the Max Planck Institute of Physics and Astrophysics in Munich in 1974. "On one particularly memorable occasion [Dyson] quipped that in his opinion, the origin of languages is an even harder problem than the origin of life. Several decades later I still brood over that."

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/03/02/905570/freeman-dyson-by-the-people-who-knew-him-an-unusual-visionary/ --Pete Tillman (talk) 01:11, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Dyson on climate change

This article needs to distinguish between what Dyson believed and what climate deniers have ascribed to him in an effort to support their beliefs.

Multiple RS attest to several core beliefs of Dyson about climate change:

• Dyson enjoyed being a contrarian, e.g. "He enjoyed unorthodox propositions and contrarian arguments; he maintained a certain scepticism about climate change (“the fuss about global warming is greatly exaggerated”)."[10]
• Dyson's objection to the climate change consensus was personal rather than professional, e.g. "I am not so much interested in global warming...I don’t claim to be an expert. I never did...My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have. I think that’s what upsets me."[11]
• Dyson was skeptical about the motivation of climate scientists, e.g. "Dyson believed that the science underpinning global warming is faulty and had challenged the motivations of climate scientists and activists. Referring to the climate campaigner and former US vice-president Al Gore, Dyson once said that 'his claims regarding the climate are not based on science. The scientists just go along with it. It’s nice to be important and the way to be important if you are a climate scientist is to say we’re running into a tremendous disaster. It’s a form of corruption in a way'.[12]
• Dyson was a skeptic about climate models, e.g. "Relishing the role of iconoclast, he confounded the scientific establishment by dismissing the consensus about the perils of man-made climate change as “tribal group-thinking.” He doubted the veracity of the climate models, and he exasperated experts with sanguine predictions they found rooted less in science than in wishfulness: Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might forestall another ice age."[13]
• Dyson believed CO2 was causing global warming, but claimed it was not dangerous, e.g. "Although he did not deny the Earth was warming — he was not a global warming denier in the strictest sense — he thought the environmental movement had overstated the threats to the planet. 'I just don’t see any evidence that global warming is particularly dangerous,' he said."[14]
• Dyson believed that a focus on global warming was distracting from other more pressing human problems. (Multiple sources)

Dyson gave a very clear explanation of his beliefs in a 2009 interview with Michael Lemonick, cited above.[15] The Wikipedia bio should accurately describe Dyson's major opinions about climate change, but without overemphasizing its importance in his career or his importance to the climate debate. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:35, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

• This article cites, 4 times, a single YouTube interview with Dyson regarding his opinions on climate change. This is inappropriate WEIGHT for a YouTube interview and does not represent the consensus of RS concerning Dyson's climate change arguments. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:30, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Dyson's objection to the climate change consensus was personal rather than professional

Rather than not "professional", the quote you give says that his objections were not knowledgeable, but were rather based on ad hominem objections about "those people". Dyson's views on the matter are already overemphasized as an argument from authority, and his numerous erroneous statements are not accompanied by the extensive rebuttals that have been written about them. This page is not the place for either. Jibal (talk) 02:01, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

summary statistics on Everettian transient gravity = many-world transient gravity (excerpt)

Freeman Dyson was correct about the nature of gravity.

Sabine Hossenfelder promotes the simplistic quantum gravity view which is also erroneous, because it rejects Everettianism/many-worlds theory.

Sean M. Carroll has a more Everettian/many-world[ed] view on gravity, but his mistake is that he (usually; Sean is talkable, speak to him; you or other Princeton physicists who care about the causal mechanism of gravity)... his mistake is that he usually calculates FINALIZED Everettian alternatives (alternative realities) and not TRANSIENT alternatives.

We need to develop new mathematical techniques (using some of the renormalization tools we have, but repurposed) with which we will calculate the TRANSIENT (non-finalized collapses of wave functions, but perpetual transient phenomena) Everettian alternatives (slightly different arrangements of objects, and how their relationship evolves with time). Of course we cannot calculate every single Everettian detail because objects compose of a huge number of particles which produce an incalculable number of Everettian variations. We should create a statistical approach to the cause of gravity conundrum.

Freeman Dyson died but not his ideas so we must continue. Freeman Dyson wasn't god. We aren't supposed to promote a theory merely because we like someone. But some people had and have the same view with Freeman Dyson on gravity. Our goal is to understand nature as it is (not Freeman Dyson; we aren't psychologists).

We should work on: summary statistics on Everettian transient gravity

and inform others who might care about the cause/causality of gravity.

• Freeman Dyson - Why is the Quantum so Mysterious? - Closer To Truth[16]

This is not a blog. Editors' opinions about which physicists are right or wrong about various matters are not relevant to Wikipedia. And please sign your comments. -- Jibal (talk) 02:04, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Repeated addition of Quantum Entanglement Engineering and Applications

Concerning Quantum Entanglement Engineering and Applications (2021) and repeated attempts to insert it into the bio: Parts of the book are online, free.

Dyson is not mentioned in the book's online summary or its chapter titles. The abstract of Chapter 10 does include Dyson: "The thoughts of Born, Dirac, Dyson, Feynman, Lamb, and Ward are applied to further develop a direct pragmatic paradox-free perspective of quantum mechanics. Particular attention is given to Dyson's first layer and second layer description of quantum mechanics. This perspective enables the description of quantum interferometry measurements and quantum entanglement measurements in a cohesive indeterministic approach via the concept of superposition probabilities."

Rather than inviting readers to hunt through a technical book for unspecified Dyson-related information, it would make sense for someone with access to the book to provide useful information from it, cited directly, with page numbers, etc.

The original essay where Dyson describes first and second layer stuff (very non-technical) is here. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:01, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps related: the article about book's author F. J. Duarte is full of promo. Also, if Dyson's two-layer quantum opinion was important, we could cite his own essay and readers could read it. There is no need to divert readers to the 10th chapter of a non-notable book that cannot be read online. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Professor Dyson held Einsteins chair at Princeton

It's reasonably interesting for people to understand what position Dyson had and who he succeded and were his older contemporaries. Or I'd at least hope we bothered to take care of some details for posterity that actually has at least both some relevance AND might show how our times and the 20th century viewed his position contribution etc. 84.211.240.52 (talk) 16:59, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

External links

There are twenty-one entries in the "External links" and subsections. Three seems to be an acceptable number and of course, everyone has their favorite to add for four. The problem is that none is needed for article promotion.

• ELpoints #3) states: Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum. A lack of external links or a small number of external links is not a reason to add external links.
• LINKFARM states: There is nothing wrong with adding one or more useful content-relevant links to the external links section of an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, for example, including a link to one major fansite may be appropriate.
• WP:ELMIN: Minimize the number of links. -- Otr500 (talk) 01:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)