SALE ON NOW! PROMOTIONS
Freeman Dyson has spent most of his life as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, taking time off to advise the US government and write books for the general public. He was born in England and worked as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He came to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and worked with Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, producing a user-friendly way to calculate the behavior of atoms and radiation. He also worked on nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology, looking for problems where elegant mathematics could be usefully applied. Dyson's books includeDisturbing the Universe(1979),Weapons and Hope(1984),Infinite in All Directions(1988),Origins of Life(1986, second edition 1999),The Sun, the Genome and the Internet(1999), The Scientist as Rebel(2006, published by New York Review Books), andA Many-Colored Glass- Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe(2010). New York Review Books will publish Dreams of Earth and Sky, a new collection of Dyson's essays, in April 2015.He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
[Dyson] writes with detailed, admirable conviction. -- The New York Times Book Review Dyson [is], neuron for neuron, one of the most formidably provocative minds in American life...The bedazzled reader emerges feeling like he's been in a metaphysical Maytag on spin cycle--his perspective on man, God, and the cosmos permanently altered. -- The Washington Post Book World To observe a mind uncommonly endowed with dexterity and knowledge hop from subject to subject is exhilarating. -- Time Praise for Disturbing the Universe A passionate testament, one of the most remarkable self-portraits of a scientist that I have ever read...Though this book is meant primarily for non-scientists, to acquaint them with how a scientist looks at the world, one does not have to read far to realize that this is the witness, not of a scientist representing his class, but of a unique kind of scientist, a man endowed with literary skill, with a rare capacity for humor and introspection, with a sensitive understanding of the language of the humanist. -- The New Republic Praise for The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolution A most engaging and important book, as accessible as it is profound. --Oliver Sacks A thoughtful and thought-provoking glimpse into the twenty-first century...A must-read...Only Dyson could weave together this rich tapestry, blending ethics, ideology, science, and technology into a coherent vision of the future. --Michio Kaku, author of Hyperspace and Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century
