Quote

The history of mathematics is a history of horrendously difficult problems being solved by young people too ignorant to know that they were impossible.

Freeman Dyson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Freeman Dyson
Age: 96 †
Born: 1923
Born: December 15
Died: 2020
Died: February 28
Mathematician
Nuclear Physicist
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Crowthorne
Berkshire
Freeman John Dyson
Freeman J. Dyson
Problems
Impossible
Difficult
History
Young
Problem
Solved
People
Ignorant
Mathematics

More quotes by Freeman Dyson

Image
I think the biggest misconception is that everybody has to learn mathematics. That seems to be a complete mistake.
Freeman Dyson
Image
It is our task, both in science and in society at large, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong and to make our unpredictable dreams come true
Freeman Dyson
Image
What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The great advances in science usually result from new tools rather than from new doctrines.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Of course, the English countryside is completely artificial. It was naturally a forest they chopped down the trees and made it into what it is now: really a beautiful country.
Freeman Dyson
Image
[John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians
Freeman Dyson
Image
You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?
Freeman Dyson
Image
For me, science is just a bunch of tools - it's like playing the violin.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Intelligence may indeed be a benign influence creating isolated groups of philosopher-kings far apart in the heavens... On the other hand, intelligence may be a cancer of purposeless technological exploitation, sweeping across a galaxy as irresistibly as it has swept across our own planet.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Plasma seems to have the kinds of properties one would like for life. It's somewhat like liquid water--unpredictable and thus able to behave in an enormously complex fashion. It could probably carry as much information as DNA does. It has at least the potential for organizing itself in interesting ways.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The reason why new concepts in any branch of science are hard to grasp is always the same contemporary scientists try to picture the new concept in terms of ideas which existed before.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people.
Freeman Dyson
Image
New directions in science are launched by new tools much more often than by new concepts. The effect of a concept-driven revolution is to explain old things in new ways. The effect of a tool-driven revolution is to discover new things that have to be explained.
Freeman Dyson
Image
It is better to be wrong than to be vague.
Freeman Dyson
Image
I think we're doing pretty well. It's clear the media, of course, always gives you the bad news.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually published.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing.
Freeman Dyson
Image
The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.
Freeman Dyson
Image
Successful technologies often begin as hobbies. Jacques Cousteau invented scuba diving because he enjoyed exploring caves. The Wright brothers invented flying as a relief from the monotony of their normal business of selling and repairing bicycles.
Freeman Dyson