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Falling in love with Russian

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My additions to the Winchester College Museum
Freeman Dyson Scientist
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[Q] By then mathematics was the primary passion among the four of you or...?

It was primary passion for Lighthill and me and then... the Longuet-Higginses I think were rather broader, and of course Christopher was a very, very capable musician and his passion was really music more than anything else. And... and Michael was a great artist with building models. He... he's extremely good with his hands. Still is. So we... we built models of mathematical figures and polyhedra and... which still are to be found in the museum in Winchester. And we had just intense interests also in literature and politics and everything else.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020), who was born in England, moved to Cornell University after graduating from Cambridge University with a BA in Mathematics. He subsequently became a professor and worked on nuclear reactors, solid state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics and biology. He published several books and, among other honours, was awarded the Heineman Prize and the Royal Society's Hughes Medal.

Listeners: Sam Schweber

Silvan Sam Schweber is the Koret Professor of the History of Ideas and Professor of Physics at Brandeis University, and a Faculty Associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is the author of a history of the development of quantum electro mechanics, "QED and the men who made it", and has recently completed a biography of Hans Bethe and the history of nuclear weapons development, "In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist" (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Tags: Winchester College, Winchester College Museum, James Lighthill, Michael Longuet-Higgins, Christopher Longuet-Higgins

Duration: 1 minute, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: June 1998

Date story went live: 24 January 2008