Freeman Dyson is the British mathematical physicist who famously drove cross-country from New York to California with Richard Feynman in the late 1950's and helped him work out the mathematics enabling him to formalize the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, for which Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in 1965. Along with Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman was and is the most beloved American physicist of all time. He had a wonderful sense of humor, was admired without reservation by a whole generation of Cal Tech students, and he died in 1988.
Besides having been a lifelong friend of Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson has published several physics books for laymen; and he is a devout Christian, which is not common among physicists. But to my way of thinking above all, Dyson is an optimistic scientist when it comes to biological research involving creation of new organisms.
To view a previous OEN article of mine quoting from a book by Freeman Dyson, published on August 6, 2010 (Hiroshima Day), click here.
This article is in two parts. Both parts are based on Dyson's most recent popular book, A Many-Colored Glass. And both parts will quote extensively from the book, published by the University of Virginia Press, copyright 2007. The title of the book is taken from two lines in the poem "Adonais" by Percy Bysshe Shelly:
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,/
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
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