Freeman Dyson: By the Book (original) (raw)
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Freeman DysonCredit...Illustration by Jillian Tamaki
April 16, 2015
The physicist, mathematician and author, most recently, of “Dreams of Earth and Sky” says the best books he knows about mathematics and physics are nearly a hundred years old.
What books are currently on your night stand?
“The Left Side of History,” by Kristen Ghodsee, and “The Parthenon Enigma,” by Joan Connelly. Two wonderful new books by friends of mine. Kristen is an anthropologist at Bowdoin College, writing about the history of the last hundred years as it is seen through the eyes of her informants in Bulgaria. History looks very different if you fought for national liberation and human progress under the banner of Communism. Joan is an archaeologist at New York University. She writes about the archaic Greek myths and rituals that became embodied in the statuary of the Parthenon. She has a startlingly new interpretation of the Parthenon as the centerpiece of the religious life of ancient Athens. Kristen and Joan are kindred spirits, working with different tools in different millennia, and finding a similar illumination. To understand either modern Bulgarians or ancient Greeks, you must enter their world of human self-sacrifice.
Who is your favorite novelist of all time?
Octavia Butler, a tall black lady who died in 2006. She wrote “Parable of the Sower” and “Parable of the Talents,” two books that are normally classified as science fiction but are more concerned with theology than with science. The main character in both stories is a black woman who survives apocalyptic disasters and becomes the founder of a new religion in California. The character is in many ways a self-portrait of Octavia. I once spent a day with her entertaining a crowd of Chicago inner-city schoolchildren. I answered the science questions. She answered all the others. She was the star of the show.
Whom do you consider the best contemporary writers on science and mathematics?
On science, my favorite is Edward Wilson. In “The Ants” (with Bert Hölldobler) and “On Human Nature,” he describes ants and humans with equal insight. On mathematics, my favorite is Robert Kanigel, who wrote “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” a biography of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan. It is impossible to write a readable book about real mathematics for nonmathematical readers. The best anybody can do is to write about a real mathematician.
What are the best books about mathematics for the lay reader? The best books about physics?
The best books that I know about mathematics and physics are almost a hundred years old: “Men of Mathematics,” by Eric Bell, published in 1937, and “Space, Time and Gravitation,” by Arthur Eddington, published in 1920. Bell’s book seduced a large number of kids of my generation, including me, into becoming mathematicians. Eddington’s book was the main reason why Einstein was better understood and admired by the general public in Britain and America than he was in Germany. No comparably clear account of Einstein’s ideas existed in German.
On to controversial topics: What books would you recommend on climate science? On the relationship between science and religion?
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