Research Catalog

Title

Maverick genius : the pioneering odyssey of Freeman Dyson / Phillip F. Schewe.

Author

Schewe, Phillip F.

Publication

New York : Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

x, 339 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"Freeman Dyson has been influential in many fields over his long and legendary career, including quantum physics, national defense, space, and religion. In this definitive biography, author Phillip F. Schewe examines the life of one of the most innovative thinkers of our time, whose accomplishments include: Designing a nuclear rocket ship, The Orion, for NASA Helping write the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Consulting Stanley Kubrick on the film 2001: A Space Odyssey Winning the coveted million dollar Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion A colleague of Albert Einstein at Princeton and friends with leading thinkers including Robert Oppenheimer, George F. Kennan, and Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson is a larger-than-life figure in the world of science, and he has recently made headlines for his controversial views on global warming. Written with the cooperation of Dyson's children, entrepreneur Esther Dyson (an early investor in Flickr, Google, and Orbitz, who has often been called 'The First Lady of the Internet') and tech writer George Dyson, this is the first complete biography of the man who changed the way we think about science today"--

Subjects

• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology
• Physicists > United States > Biography
• Dyson, Freeman J
• Mathematicians > United States > Biography

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Killing time: Dyson bombs Berlin (1923-1945) -- Life is a blur: Dyson as mathematician (1945-1947) -- Ecumenical councils: Dyson as seminarian (1947-1948) -- The secret signature of things: Dyson as artist (1948-1949) -- Recessional: Dyson as professor (1949-1953) -- Nuclear opera: Dyson and the Cold War (1954-1956) -- Intrinsically safe: Dyson as engineer (1956-1957) -- Space traveler's manifesto: Dyson as rocketeer (1957-1959) -- Civilized behavior: Dyson searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (early 1960s) -- Nuclear manifesto: Dyson as diplomat (early 1960s) -- On the Oregon Trail: Dyson as Pentagon consultant (1960s-1970s) -- Success in life: Dyson as astronomer (mid 1960s to mid 1970s) -- Science and sublime: Dyson as essayist (1976-1985) -- Nuclear slavery: Dyson as abolitionist (1980s) -- The arc of life: Dyson as biologist (1980s and 1990s) -- God and man at Princeton: Dyson as preacher (1985-2000) -- Splintering the species: Dyson as heretic (1990-2010) -- Long-term thinking: Dyson as storyteller (recent years).

ISBN

• 9780312642358 (hardback)
• 0312642350 (hardback)
• 9781250021014 (e-book) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2012041967
• 99953782445

OCLC

• ocn795010248
• 795010248
• SCSB-5688624

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries