Disturbing the universe
by Freeman J. Dyson · first published 1979
53% recommend47% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Freeman Dyson's memoir of his life in physics, with vivid accounts of nuclear reactor and Orion rocket work and his encounters with Feynman and others; readers enjoy its literary, personal style.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Spanning the years from World War II, when he was a civilian statistician in the operations research section of the Royal Air Force Bomber Command, through his studies with Hans Bethe at Cornell University, his early friendship with Richard Feynman, and his postgraduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson has composed an autobiography unlike any other. Dyson evocatively conveys the thrill of a deep engagement with the world-be it as scientist, citizen, student, or parent. Detailing a unique career not limited to his groundbreaking work in physics, Dyson discusses his interest in min
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Please read Freeman Dysons's "Disturbing The Universe". This book is autobiographical and Dyson explains his arc of passion for nuclear propulsion and Orion. His strongest statement in this book is some deep respect for a biological scientist who, after…
on “Nuclear Pulse Propulsion – Orion and Beyond (2000) [pdf]” ↗Freeman Dyson's book, Disturbing the Universe, which is quoted in this article, is a great read. Highly recommended.
on “Nobody builds nuclear reactors for fun anymore” ↗Disturbing the Universe, by Freeman Dyson. http://www.amazon.com/Disturbing-Universe-Foundation-Science...
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite books? I'm bored” ↗…fortunate to grow up in the bay area and get an education at a good public school where my teachers introduced me to Harold Jacobs's "Geometry" Nietziche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing The Universe" Nigel Calder's "The Key to the Universe" Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" Douglas Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach" I especially loved spending time in the library, reading OMNI magazine,…
on “Ask HN: Non-tech books that have helped you grow professionally?” ↗Dyson's Disturbing the Universe is one of the most interesting memoirs I've read. Startuppy types ought to like the story of General Atomics starting with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIGA as a summer project, and that was just one…
on “My Life with the Physics Dream Team” ↗My fave is his memoir Disturbing the Universe. HN types would probably especially like the chapters on 'startups' he worked on: the TRIGA nuclear reactor and the Orion nuclear rocket.
on “Freeman Dyson – Birds and Frogs (2009)” ↗For a different source, Freeman Dyson's biography, Disturbing the Universe, is extraordinarily worthwhile. He has crazy Feynman stories too, and Dyson is a very sober witness to the bongo-drum-playing, picking-up-hitchhikers, getting-pulled- over-for-speeding Feynman that comes…
on “What Impossible Meant to Feynman” ↗Freeman Dyson is excellent. I'd say my favorite of his is Disturbing the Universe, technically a memoir but not so different from his essay collections.
on “Great Essays and Essayists” ↗…you also realize the "should of giants" are really the shoulders of men? Capricious and agenda-driven and haphazard, if you care to zoom in with enough resolution. For Christmas I got Freeman Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe". I never realized how poetic the man was. I always admired Dyson for his courage to speak out and his scientific insight, but he makes beautiful connections between poetry and science, Faust and Newton,…
on “Nobel Prize speech from the inventor of PCR, Kary Mullis (1993)” ↗Recently I randomly came across the book Dear Prof Dyson (https://www.amazon.com/Dear-Professor-Dyson-Correspondence-U...) in Half Price Books. I had loved Dyson’s literary-scientific style from Disturbing the Universe so bought this one, too. His patience in answering letters from undergrads on topics ranging from physics to philosophy is amazing, what a learned man! It seems like having a literary bent was more common…
on “Freeman Dyson and me” ↗…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFTvjRpaU38 Funny anecdote: Freeman Dyson wrote an excellent essay about Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, playing this piece. It's included in his collection of essays, Disturbing the Universe, which I'd highly recommend.
on “How to play the piano: On Glenn Gould” ↗My best guess is what Freeman Dyson said in his autobiography Disturbing the Universe: he stopped working on nuclear reactors after TRIGA (01958) and Project Orion (01957 to 01961) because it stopped being fun. It became a question of bureaucracy and national security and empire-building…
on “Why are nuclear power construction costs so high? Part III – the nuclear navy” ↗…writing down the equations. He had a physical picture of the way things happen, and the picture gave him the solutions directly with a minimum of calculation." edit: That's from Dyson's autobiography 'Disturbing the Universe'.
on “Vi Hart: Every school should replace calculus with recreational math” ↗…relentlessly on the track of paper and grant generation, as well as committee work, if they wanted to succeed. I would be a really bad fit in that job. I got into science because I love the hands-on act of "disturbing the universe", in Freeman Dyson's memorable phrase, and even in the improbable event that I landed a tenure-track job (improbable in part because as a post-doc I tended to work on problems that interested me, rather…
on “An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia (2013)” ↗Well, the accelerations involved here would cause the most significant time dilation, right? I was going off of memory of the chapter "Saturn by 1970" in Dyson's "Disturbing the Universe". I probably mixed this up with something else; traveling at 1G acceleration to Orion (not in orion =P), would take 30 years--3100 years would pass by on earth.
on “Can Starships Survive the Journey?” ↗