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My middle class upbringing
Freeman Dyson Scientist
Next Views Duration
1. My middle class upbringing 6860 01:01
2. Early interest in science 3185 01:42
3. Family relationships 2122 01:22
4. Winchester during the Depression 1919 00:51
5. A young love for numbers 2612 01:32
6. Uncle Freeman: the classical scholar 1968 01:22
7. Persecution at prep school 1851 01:45
8. Coming to Winchester 1502 00:52
9. Exams and friends at Winchester College 1854 01:34
10. My additions to the Winchester College Museum 1510 01:01
11. Falling in love with Russian 1819 02:11
12. Opening the gates of mathematics 2047 03:04
13. Inspirational chemistry teacher: Eric James 1555 03:13
14. Biology: talents versus interests 1737 02:53
15. Reading in Winchester College library 1433 01:57
16. What did I win for coming top of the class? 1553 02:23
17. Studying mathematics at Winchester 1682 03:35
18. Snobbery and the class system 1841 01:46
19. Piaggio and school holidays 1297 01:57
20. Mother's influence on my relationships 1275 01:51
21. Political feelings in the '30s: Communism and pacifism 1244 05:27
22. Being on the outside 1155 00:38
23. Pure mathematics at Cambridge: the influence of Besicovitch 1948 04:16
24. Relationship with Besicovitch 1411 01:42
25. GH Hardy and JE Littlewood's lectures 2151 02:13
26. Littlewood's Tauberian theorem and Dyson's ferromagnet paper 1440 03:07
27. Other tutors at Cambridge: Dirac, Jeffreys, Eddington 2015 03:10
28. Oscar Hahn 1272 02:08
29. The Hahn Family - Judaism 1319 01:03
30. The walk from Cambridge to London 1223 01:16
31. Family warmth 1033 01:03
32. Father's move to London 947 00:45
33. Ending pacifism by joining the army 1099 01:26
34. Receiving a BA Degree 1302 01:37
35. Sent to Bomber Command 1189 02:02
36. The bombing of Hamburg and Dresden 1507 03:20
37. The people at Operations Research in Bomber Command 1287 03:26
38. Problems in bombing policy and aircraft design 1285 05:36
39. Failure to provide defence for pilots 1092 01:04
40. Mathematical work during the war: the alpha-beta theorem 1375 02:46
41. Effect of experiences at Bomber Command 1110 01:01
42. Hermann Bondi: The adviser 1125 00:44
43. Hiroshima and the end of Bomber Command 1340 01:14
44. Sinecure at Imperial College 1119 01:34
45. Work in pure mathematics while at Imperial College 1290 03:58
46. Harold Davenport 1091 01:01
47. Coming to Cambridge as a fellow - Wittgenstein 2259 04:18
48. Decision to move from mathematics to physics 1733 02:01
49. Being supervised by Nicholas Kemmer 1346 03:06
50. Heitler: quantum theory of radiation 1541 00:59
51. Studying quantum field theory 2174 01:55
52. The reasons for moving to Cornell University 1709 02:36
53. Good fortune 1357 01:56
54. Introduction to the American way of life 1577 00:55
55. Community at the Rockefeller building 1151 01:27
56. Courses and people at Cornell 1562 02:42
57. Work on the Lamb shift equation 1508 03:01
58. Richard Feynman and his work 5065 05:42
59. Presenting the Lamb shift findings 1854 00:57
60. Introduction to strong interactions 1352 00:56
61. Fellow graduate students at Cornell 1451 02:26
62. Social differences between England and the US 1606 01:11
63. The Cold War and the Federation of American Scientists 1263 02:26
64. The Lamb shift 2277 05:44
65. Hans Bethe 2230 04:57
66. The difficulty of getting anything started 1450 00:46
67. Working practice 1400 01:51
68. Moving from Cornell to the Institute for Advanced Study 1315 01:54
69. Julian Schwinger's summer school talks 2452 00:42
70. An educational road trip with Richard Feynman 2871 02:35
71. Talking physics with Feynman: path integrals 3216 02:55
72. The Feynman diagrams 3026 02:36
73. How difficult was it to understand Schwinger? 4180 04:55
74. George Uhlenbeck and David Park at Ann Arbor 1398 01:18
75. Travels: Berkeley, Martin Luther King, Salt Lake City 1215 01:50
76. Linking the ideas of Feynman, Schwinger and Tomanaga 2348 06:47
77. Meeting Feynman with Cécile DeWitt-Morette - the proof needed 2721 02:19
78. Trying to convince Oppenheimer that the old physics works 2167 03:43
79. The seminar series: convincing Oppenheimer 2023 03:54
80. The S-matrix paper that made me famous 2075 02:53
81. Oldstone conference: Renormalization of theories 1385 02:14
82. Returning to England 1112 01:03
83. Oppenheimer 2164 03:27
84. The Princeton Institute: faculty, friends, attitudes 2086 04:20
85. Oppenheimer's parting advice 1966 01:48
86. Falling in love with Verena Haefeli 1832 01:17
87. Verena Haefeli 1490 02:40
88. Relationship with parents 1253 02:06
89. Being a house guest of Rudolf and Genia Peierls 1254 01:12
90. The betrayal by Klaus Fuchs 1898 02:53
91. Gerry Brown 1193 00:58
92. Attempts to make quantum electrodynamics into a completely solvable theory 1497 04:31
93. Work on the strong interactions 1171 03:17
94. Fermi's rejection of our work 2857 06:35
95. Why I don't like the PhD system 4216 06:56
96. Being the laundry boy during the Oppenheimer security hearings 1479 03:10
97. Leave Princeton if Oppenheimer was sacked? 1371 01:30
98. Summer school at Les Houches 1985 01:33
99. Work at Berkeley with Charles Kittel 1986 01:32
100. Ferromagnetism and spin wave theory 1295 05:06
101. One-dimensional ferromagnets 866 02:32
102. The ground state energy of a hard-sphere Bose gas - Elliot Lieb 885 02:06
103. Energy levels of complex systems: background 875 03:50
104. Inviting Mehta to work on circular ensembles 846 02:13
105. My work with Mehta is now more relevant 814 04:49
106. A bottle of champagne to prove the stability of matter 1165 03:40
107. Lieb and Thirring clean up my matter stability proof 1236 03:24
108. Phase transitions in three dimensional ferromagnets 708 03:00
109. Could gravity vary with time? 1088 06:09
110. Work by Dyson and Alex Shlyakhter on the fine-structure constant 819 04:08
111. Samarium 149 proves the world is so rich in detail 973 06:04
112. Building a safe reactor at General Atomics 818 02:14
113. How the warm neutron principle works 961 05:32
114. Edward Teller: Like a spoilt brat 1890 02:04
115. Project Orion: background 2815 01:33
116. Project Orion: using basic principles of physics 1769 01:59
117. Project Orion: Dyson's work 1313 05:00
118. Interest in space science and space travel 1067 05:12
119. Project Orion: the question of fallout 897 01:42
120. The nuclear test ban and the end of Project Orion 818 03:34
121. Discussion with Bethe and Teller on the nuclear test ban 896 00:59
122. Becoming an American citizen 944 01:49
123. Invitation to join JASON 803 02:42
124. JASON's involvement with the Human Genome Project and JASON's members 657 03:43
125. My opinion of the DoE and NIH positions on genome sequencing 580 01:34
126. Adaptive optics and the problems of classification 662 06:22
127. Claire Max and adaptive optics 608 02:20
128. Misconceptions about JASON in Vietnam 685 06:08
129. Work with the Disarmament Agency 447 02:51
130. Matthew Meselson's opposition to chemical and biological weapons 607 03:28
131. Positions on further weapons research 621 01:25
132. Being wary of genetic engineering 697 03:02
133. Genetic engineering and the responsibility of scientists 643 04:11
134. Astrophysics: 'I've been a cheerleader but not a player' 631 02:36
135. Gravitational wave astronomy 704 02:00
136. Communication with aliens: The Cocconi-Morrison conjecture 805 02:39
137. Detecting aliens through artificial sources of infra-red 683 02:45
138. The Dyson sphere - hijacked by science fiction 1335 02:33
139. Being outside of general relativity 1090 01:01
140. Survival in an older and colder universe 851 03:24
141. The origins of life 1119 03:48
142. My theory on the origin of life 1325 06:29
143. The origins of life - the idea of symbiosis 747 03:23
144. The balance of carbon in the atmosphere 1541 06:33
145. Stratospheric cooling vs global warming 1033 01:27
146. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: conclusions 1166 02:42
147. Early work on Ramanujan and the continued relevance of mathematics 1428 02:31
148. 'God appears to be a mathematician' 1759 02:35
149. On becoming a writer 825 02:51
150. Shift in priorities from career to global problems 660 01:00
151. Science and religion 1655 03:45
152. Reflection on career 1055 04:23
153. Rocky relationships with institutions and people 1097 02:13
154. My friendship with Oliver Sacks 1083 01:48
155. Family, friends and work 871 01:04
156. Friends and children 919 01:57
157. Why I am an optimist 1308 02:36

So I grew up in a middle class family in England, which meant in those days we had four servants, a cook, a housemaid, a nurse maid and a gardener, and our friends all belonged to that class of society. Looking back, it's extraordinary how comfortable we were. And all our families were school teacher families. My father was a school teacher, and we lived in this little community in Winchester. It was a private school but the teachers were of amazingly high quality and lived in what would now be considered rather lavish style, but in those days they didn't have all that much money, the servants mostly got very little wages, but they got free board and lodging and it was a little bit like the ante-bellum South, the slaves knew their place but we considered them to be happy.

Born in England in 1923, Freeman Dyson 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 has published several books and, among other honours, has been 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, UK

Duration: 1 minute, 2 seconds

Date story recorded: June 1998

Date story went live: 24 January 2008

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