There is a wonderful 157 part series of short 3 minute or so videos of a few hours of interviews of Freeman Dyson. Dyson talks about his interactions with the giants in physics and science.
You get a sense of the people who are involved in laying the foundations of physics. Freeman tells you about the nature of the geniuses involved.
Freeman Dyson was a genius. He tells you about the genius of Enrico Fermi. Fermi’s physics intuition and genius saved Freeman Dyson from wasting 5 years working on a physics theory that was wrong. Dyson and a team had already spent many months working on it.
There are interesting insights into high-level math and physics and how to think rigorously at a high level.
Fermi said, When one does a theoretical calculation there are two ways to do it. Either you should have a clear physical model in mind or you should have a rigorous mathematical basis.
Dyson: What do you think of the numerical agreement?
Fermi: How many parameters did you use for the fitting and how many free parameters were there in your method.
Dyson: There are four
Fermi: You know Johnny Von Neumann always used to say with four parameters I could a fit an elephant and with five I could make him wiggle his trunk. I do not find the numerical method very impressive either.
Ten years later quarks were invented. Pions had to be represented as a compound of quarks. All experimental agreement before quarks was illusory.
SOURCES- Freeman Dyson Interviews
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Let’s hear Freeman Dyson talk about global warming.
Over fitting the data to an elephant…
Dyson plus O’Neill = future