Freeman Dyson Interview (page: 4 / 6) Theoretical Physicist and Author	Print Interview

Were you a good student?

Freeman Dyson: Yes. But of course it was a fortunate time to be a student, because the whole system was screwed up. By the time I got into high school and college the war had started. All the teachers were away, they were all fighting the war and so the whole system was completely in disarray. So that was a great time to get an education.

Great in what way?

Freeman Dyson: Well, we could do what we liked. We didn't have to go to class. There wasn't any paper, so therefore there weren't any exams. In England all exams had to be written. So since the country was out of paper there weren't any exams, so you could actually get ahead. So I studied all kinds of interesting stuff. I didn't have to worry about the curriculum.

Given this opportunity, what did you study? What interested you?

Freeman Dyson: I was interested in lots of things. Biology, I was interested in becoming a doctor. I thought of being a medical doctor at that time. But I found out that I had no talent for that, so I ended up as a mathematician, rather by accident.

What do you mean?

Freeman Dyson: I think it's a common situation.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had interests which were much wider than my talents. So I would have loved to do all kinds of wonderful things, to be an explorer or to be a medical doctor. In spite of everything, the only thing I really could do was mathematics. That's the only talent I had. So I ended up doing that. It wasn't such a bad idea, because as a mathematician I could actually be useful in all sorts of directions. So I applied mathematics. First of all, I worked for the Royal Air Force as a statistician. That was my first job in the war. And then afterwards I turned to physics and I turned to astronomy. I turned to engineering. In all those fields I could apply mathematics. So I had very little formal training. I think the usual rule is it's much better to do something first and then find out how to learn it, rather than trying to learn it first.

How did you discover this talent?

Freeman Dyson: Mathematics was something I was born with. At the age of three I was doing calculations and I loved numbers. I just loved multiplying big numbers, and that's something you can't account for. My father was a musician. He was playing the piano at the age of three, and I was doing calculations.

How were you influenced by your family? What was your family like?

Freeman Dyson: Well, he was a musician and my mother was a lawyer. I enjoyed both of them but they didn't force their ideas onto me. They understood that I was different. So I had all the encouragement, but very little pressure, which I thought was very fortunate. It was just right for me. They supplied me with books, and my father read a lot of popular science, so I read all the books on his shelf and that was extremely helpful. He was interested in what I was doing, and he never tried to develop a musical talent which I didn't have.

What about your siblings?

Freeman Dyson: I have an older sister who is still going strong. In fact, she's one of my closest friends. When I write books, I write books for the general public. I usually have my sister in mind as the audience. She's a retired medical social worker, so she knows people. She doesn't know science, and she's the kind of person I like to write for.

Do you think it helped to be a younger brother and have an older sister?

Freeman Dyson: Oh, yes. She was enormously helpful to me and never resented the fact that I got all the limelight.

That's unusual, doing these calculations at the age of three. Growing up, was it difficult being different?

Freeman Dyson: No. I always lived among hooligans. I went to a Dickensian school where bigger and stronger boys were always bullying me and slapping me around, so I was always the underdog. But somehow that was part of life, and I wasn't depressed. I just learned to live with that. The only way I could beat them was I was better at math.

You beat them with numbers.

Freeman Dyson: Yes.

As a young person was there an experience or an event that inspired you? Was there some defining moment for you when you were growing up?

Freeman Dyson: Yes, I think I could say yes. It was the time when I developed a new religion. It was grotesque that that's the way it was.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When I was 14 I suddenly had a kind of conversion to a new religion, which I called Cosmic Unity, in which all human beings were the same person. It was a kind of transmigration of souls, except instead of waiting until you were dead before transmigrating, you transmigrated all the time. So we were always just the same soul flitting around from one person to another. So it gave you a scientific justification for ethics. If the person that you are hurting is just yourself, then clearly it doesn't make sense. So that was what we were going to talk to Hitler about, I guess. So anyway, I started out then as an evangelist, at the age of 14, to try to make converts to this great new religion. And I wasn't very successful. I think I made one and a half converts all together, and so it only lasted for a few months. But in a way that defined my attitude, both to human problems and to religion in a way. I thought everybody goes through such a time of life when you start to take the problems of life and death seriously. That's the way it hit me.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

It may not hit many people at the age of 14! Was there a person, perhaps a teacher, or particular books that influenced or inspired you when you were young?

Freeman Dyson: There was an older boy called Brian Lloyd. I'd love to know what happened to him. He was a Welsh boy who had a wonderful gift of the gab. He talked for six hours, and that's why we chose six hours, because that was his habit, to talk for six hours. He was really good. If he had got to talk to Hitler he might even have done the job!

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