“WELL, DOC, YOU’RE IN” “WELL, DOC, YOU’RE IN” Freeman Dyson’s Journey through the Universe EDITED BY DAVID KAISER The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. The MIT Press would like to thank the anonymous peer reviewers who provided com- ments on drafts of this book. The generous work of academic experts is essential for establishing the authority and quality of our publications. We acknowledge with grati- tude the contributions of these otherwise uncredited readers. This book was set in Scala Pro and Scala Sans by Westchester Publishing Ser vices. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available. ISBN: 978- 0- 262- 04734- 0 CONTENTS Introduction 1 David Kaiser 1 That Secret Club of Heretics and Rebels 21 Amanda Gefter 2 Calculation and Reckoning: Navigating Science, War, and Guilt 47 William Thomas 3 The First Apprentice 71 David Kaiser 4 A Frog among Birds: Dyson as a Mathematical Physicist 105 Robbert Dijkgraaf 5 Single Stage to Saturn: Project Orion, 1957– 1965 143 George Dyson 6 Dyson, Warfare, and the Jasons 177 Ann Finkbeiner 7 A Warm Little Pond: Dyson and the Origins of Life 203 Ashutosh Jogalekar CONTENTS 8 The Cosmic Seer 233 Caleb Scharf 9 A Bouquet of Dyson 257 Jeremy Bernstein Coda: Not the End 271 Esther Dyson Acknowledgments 279 About the Authors 281 Index 285 vi INTRODUCTION DAVID KAISER “Here is a scientist who can really write,” the physicist Hans Bethe observed in his review of Freeman Dyson’s first book, Disturbing the Universe, in 1979.1 Dyson, who died on February 28, 2020, at the age of ninety- six, was a mathematician and theoretical physicist by training, but he became best known to most people as a writer. His first book, a poi- gnant autobiographical reflection, was a finalist for the National Book Award; he went on to publish ten more. For twenty- five years, he was a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, writing on a daz- zling range of authors and topics—f rom Daniel Kahneman to Michael Crichton, the history of the Galápagos to the concept of infinity. His last piece, on “the outcast genius” and astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky, appeared six weeks before his death.2 Even by physicists’ standards, Dyson’s thinking was strikingly uncon- strained by the here and now. One moment he was delving into the eso- terica of quantum theory, and the next, he was speculating about the logistics of alien civilizations. In the 1950s, he joined the team develop- ing a new type of nuclear reactor, which included several novel safety features; soon after, he was designing a spacecraft propelled by nuclear