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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

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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
Difficult
History
Young
Problem
Solved
People
Ignorant
Mathematics
Problems
Impossible

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Boiled down to one sentence, my message is the unboundedness of life and the unboundedness of human destiny.
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To me, mathematics is like playing the violin. Some people can do it - others can't. If you don't have it, then there's no point in pretending.
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People who travel in China tell me that the mood there is still very upbeat, because their media is different from our media. Chinese media emphasize how well things are going and suppress the bad news and publish the good news.
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Unfortunately the global warming hysteria, as I see it, is driven by politics more than by science.
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Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute.
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I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.
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Everything in my life was luck.
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The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.
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In religion, you're supposed to be somehow in touch with something deep and full of mysteries.
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As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.
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That's what I learned from World War II. Things are always more complicated than most people believe.
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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.
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Aviation is the branch of engineering that is least forgiving of mistakes.
Freeman Dyson
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Nothing is boring if you look at carefully.
Freeman Dyson
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CO2 is so beneficial...it would be crazy to try to reduce it
Freeman Dyson
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Science was blamed for all the horrors of World War I, just as it's blamed today for nuclear weapons and quite rightly. I mean World War I was a horrible war and it was mostly the fault of science, so that was in a way a very bad time for science, but on the other hand we were winning all these Nobel Prizes.
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It makes very little sense to believe the output of the climate models.
Freeman Dyson
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If we want to go to space with humans, that's for fun not for science. Human adventures in space are just sporting events.
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The world is just - it's wonderful when you look at all the detail. It's just amazing.
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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