Freeman Dyson at Harvard University in 2004
Freeman John Dyson (born
December 15, 1923) is an
English-born
American physicist and
mathematician. He worked as an analyst for the British Bomber Command during
World War II; after the war, he moved to
Princeton. In 1957, he became a naturalized citizen of the
United States.
In the years following the war, Dyson was responsible for demonstrating the equivalence of the two formulations of
quantum electrodynamics which existed at the time -
Richard Feynman's
path integral formulation and the variational methods developed by
Julian Schwinger and
Sin-Itiro Tomonaga (
Dyson operator).
From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the
Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using
nuclear propulsion: a prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but a
treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons in space caused the project to be abandoned.
In one of his scientific papers, Dyson theorized that a technologically advanced
society could completely surround its native star in order to maximize the capture of the star's available energy. Eventually, the civilization would completely enclose the star, intercepting
electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from visible light downwards and radiating waste heat outwards as
infrared radiation. Therefore, one method of
searching for extraterrestrial civilisations would be to look for large objects radiating in the infrared range of the
electromagnetic spectrum. Dyson conceived that such structures would be clouds of
asteroid-sized
space habitats, though
science fiction writers have preferred a solid structure: either way, such an artifact is often referred to as a
Dyson sphere. The most famous example was illustrated in an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which retired Engineer Scotty (from the original
Star Trek) was discovered to have crash-landed on an abandoned Dyson Sphere.
Dyson has also proposed the creation of a Dyson tree, a
genetically-engineered plant capable of growing on a
comet. He suggested that comets could be engineered to contain hollow spaces filled with a breathable atmosphere, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer
solar system.
Dyson has published a number of collections of speculations and observations about technology, science, and the future:
- Imagined Worlds
- From Eros to Gaia
- Disturbing the Universe
As of 2003, Dyson is the president of the
Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by Gerard K. O'Neill.
He has six children. One daughter is
Esther Dyson. His son is the historian of technology
George Dyson, one of whose books is
Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965. Despite sharing a last name, he is not related to early 20th-century astronomer
Frank Watson Dyson. However as a small boy Freeman Dyson was aware of him and credits him with inadvertently helping to spark his interest in science.
Freeman John Dyson was awarded the
Max Planck medal in 1969. In the 1984–85 academic year he gave the
Gifford lectures at
Aberdeen which resulted in the book,
Infinite In All Directions.
He was the 2000 winner of the
Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
See also
External links
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
Dyson, Freeman
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