Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The Vancouver Sun recently published a video interview with “Princeton University’s preeminent” theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, as part of their “Conversation that Matters” series hosted by Stuart McNish. (Correction: Freeman Dyson is a professor emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study, which is not affiliated with Princeton University. Thanks, Phil.) If you don’t know who Freeman Dyson is, see his condensed biography here and detailed biography here. Freeman Dyson is also skeptical of catastrophic CO2-driven global warming/climate change.
McNish’s interview with Freeman Dyson is titled Conversations that matter – Earth is actually growing greener and can be found through that link. The written introduction begins:
This week’s Conversation that Matters features Princeton University’s preeminent physicist Freeman Dyson who says models do a good job of helping us understand climate but they do a very poor job of predicting it.
It is an excellent interview. The 20 minutes flew by. Thank you, Stuart McNish and, of course, Freeman Dyson.
[H/T to Josh at BishopHill.]
related:
Josh writes: Click the image to take you to wonderful video of Freeman Dyson in conversation with Stuart McNish – it’s twenty minutes of refreshing brilliance.
H/t Hilary Ostrov.
The great Freeman Dyson – yet another contrarian Old Twyfordian, like me 🙂
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
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Certainly one of the greatest minds of our time.
Being a science fiction reader, my first word association with “Freeman Dyson” is “Dyson Sphere”.
I found this story about Dyson online earlier. When Dyson came to Princeton in 1947 he was dying to meet Einstein, so went to Einstein’s secretary, Helen Dukas, to make an appointment. In order to have something relevant to discuss, he got copies of Einsetin’s papers on unified field theory. Reading them that evening, Dyson decided the papers were crap. He couldn’t face the great Einstein and tell him his papers were junk, so he said he cancelled the meeting and spent the next eight years avoiding Einsten .
Please don’t repeat unsubstantiated urban legends, as this nonsense is not supported anywhere online. Dyson respected Einstein and it was Einstein who did not communicate with the younger scientists at the institute.
http://bigthink.com/videos/physics-in-the-days-of-einstein-and-feynman
Just as I thought. I contacted Professor Dyson and he responded confirming my suspicions,
“This story is a flat lie. Nothing like it ever happened. I never asked for an appointment with Einstein, never cancelled any appointment, and never avoided him. Whoever invented the story should be ashamed of himself. Yours, Freeman Dyson.”
Correcting History: Dyson and Einstein
http://www.populartechnology.net/2015/04/correcting-history-dyson-and-einstein.html