Maverick Genius

by Phillip F. Schewe

  Verena, pondering many years later, finds that she didn’t particularly love Freeman at the time of their wedding. She never felt entirely comfortable with him. He was deep as a thinker, he was valuable as a scientist, but he wasn’t fully socially formed, she thought. Her plaintive solution to this quandary sounded like a line from a play by Samuel Beckett: “I did not want to marry him. I did marry him.”22

  Her hope was that she could help make him come alive. She would help him become more of a human being. Besides, Katarina needed a father. For Verena, the summer of 1951 in Zurich, when Esther was born, was a high point. Verena had also been happy at Cornell, where the couple had many friends and where she could teach math.

  The thing with Hilde Jacob, the German girl whom Freeman had met in the summer of 1947, had not fully gone away. In one letter Hilde sent to Ithaca she reminded Freeman that he had mentioned the possibility of marriage with her. Freeman had to remind the confused woman that he was married to Verena.23

  The summer of 1955 was another happy time. The view of the Golden Gate in San Francisco Bay was splendid from the Dysons’ rented home in the Berkeley Hills. And because Freeman’s sister, Alice, was with them, Freeman and Verena were able to go off on their own, hiking in the Sierras for a week. Verena would soon be pregnant again. This kept them on track for Freeman’s plan—to which Verena had consented—of having six children together. Even taking into account the fact that American families were larger in the 1950s than they are now, this was an ambitious plan.

  One day the Dysons had been out walking in the eucalyptus-scented Berkeley Hills and returned to hear music coming from their living room. Someone was playing Bach on the piano, and playing it well. Dyson’s first thought was that it was his father, who used to play this particular prelude of Bach’s. Had he come on a surprise visit all the way from Britain?

  But no, it wasn’t his father. It was Edward Teller, who apologized for the intrusion. Learning that Dyson was in town for the summer, Teller had come to invite him to a party he was giving. In that instant Dyson was won over to liking the man, no matter what his role in the Oppenheimer hearing might have been.24 Teller was to be an important element in Dyson’s professional life for years to come. He took the Dyson family on a sightseeing drive up nearby Mount Diablo.

  When the summer ended, it was back to regular life in Princeton. That fall another figure who would figure prominently in Dyson’s life turned up. Georg Kreisel was not a stranger. An Austrian by birth, Kreisel had been at Trinity College during Dyson’s time there and was now building an illustrious career in mathematics, specializing in logic. At Trinity, Dyson might not have gotten on well with Wittgenstein, but Kreisel had. Kreisel would become known chiefly for his brilliant research articles, his devastating wit, and for the many intrigues and scandals surrounding his personal life, especially when it came to women.25 Nevertheless, Dyson had recommended Kreisel to Kurt Gödel, who invited Kreisel to join the Institute for Advanced Study as a temporary member.

  Kreisel had stomach problems, and found eating difficult. Food at the Dyson household prepared by Verena was much more to his liking. There he participated in many intense discussions that resonated with Verena, especially the issue of reviving her mathematics research. In order to raise a family, Mrs. Dyson had suspended her career, but was coming to view her domestic situation as a stifling cage. She had arrived at the Institute in 1948 as a respected mathematician. Now her status had become that of a faculty wife. She was expected to cook, host parties, and look good. Kreisel’s dazzling conversation was starting to awaken intellectual longings in her.

  Verena had three children and a fourth was on the way. The baby inside her kicked frequently. Katarina and little Esther had given him a name, Fishli, for the little fish that was swimming around inside Mummy. In late December, however, well into the fifth month of the pregnancy, the kicking inside ceased. The doctors conducted tests.

  On January 19, after having lunch at the Institute with her husband and with Wolfgang Pauli, Verena entered the hospital. Labor was induced, and a stillborn baby was delivered. Verena understandably was devastated. Kisses from George and roses from Katarina helped, but Freeman’s suggestions—“We have to be strong” and “We can try again”—did not. Verena remembers weeping a lot and Freeman being annoyed at this.26

  Winter and spring were miserable. Katarina (now eleven) came down with sinusitis. George (three years old) had chickenpox in February; a few days later Esther (not yet five) had it, and a few days later Katarina as well. Freeman was away at meetings in Pittsburgh and Rochester. He was gone for almost the whole month of May—to Britain, Finland, and then Russia.

  Then bigger trips. Freeman was going to La Jolla, California, for the entire summer of 1956, to work on a nuclear project, while the rest of the family was due to travel in the opposite direction, across the ocean to Europe.

  Verena and the kids stopped first in London to visit Freeman’s parents. They saw an Old Vic production of Romeo and Juliet with Claire Bloom and John Neville. The Romeo reminded Verena of Freeman, “all bony awkwardness and a grasshopper’s jumpiness.”27 Romeo’s mooning letters to his girlfriend, the one he had before Juliet, reminded her of the forlorn letters she had received from Freeman.

  Her feelings for Freeman had always been ambivalent and were becoming more so. Irritation, that great abrasive force in daily life, was becoming more common. A brilliant mathematical physicist he might be but he was not, she felt, equipped to deal with ordinary human events. He had no sense for food, like or dislike, and would eat anything put in front of him. When Verena told other wives of his indifference, they were envious.28 When Verena and Freeman went out together, he would often walk right behind her, as if she were his mother and not his wife.

  A wife knows her husband better than others do. But Verena’s is just one view of Freeman Dyson. Outsiders have opinions too. And there are worse things than practicality. Philip Morrison, physics professor at Cornell and later at MIT, was impressed but puzzled by Dyson. Dyson was, Morrison thought, very private, enigmatic, and extremely learned.29 Another baffled but admiring opinion comes from one of Dyson’s colleagues at the Institute, Abraham Pais, who first took note of the young Englishman while Dyson was still a student of Bethe’s. Himself a graceful writer and future scientific biographer, Pais quickly formed a lasting estimation of Dyson:

  The kid is smart.… He looked a bit unusual: stiff white collar and light blue eyes that would stare piercingly at you. I recall my first impression: that fellow must be an eccentric, an opinion which I have never changed.

  It is not so simple, however, to define what one means by eccentricity. In my view eccentrics are people with a strong sense of personal liberty, strong individuals whose actions never include acting, who have strong inclinations of their own that they are not afraid to express and on which they refuse to compromise.30

  In the wake of the miscarriage, Verena was depressed. She wanted to see a psychiatrist, but Freeman felt this was unnecessary. His mother, Lady Dyson, hinted that perhaps at her age and condition, Verena was no longer up to the rigors of having six babies. Actually Verena felt fit enough. Perhaps Freeman was the one lacking sufficient energy. According to Verena, Freeman was “satisfied with simply sitting and watching me and the kids live.” He seemed to have retreated to a world of concepts and not one of direct experience.31

  Verena was annoyed by Freeman’s incessant quoting of poetry, both in his letters and in his conversation; it was another way that Freeman insulated himself from ordinary reality. She fantasized that he was an alien robot who had blended into human society, including marriage, by memorizing all possible literature, a task easier for robots than for humans, allowing him to interject selected passages into his discourse when appropriate.32

  One more member of the Dyson household, Katarina, had another view. She liked her stepfather. They climbed buildings together in Princeton, a daytime version of Freeman’s old night climbing habits in Cambridge
and Winchester. They went on walks together. It was on one of these expeditions that she first became aware of a hearing problem (not being able to detect high-frequency sounds) that was to remain with her for the rest of her life. “Oh Daddy,” she said, “I can’t hear you with the sun in my eyes.”33

  Katarina liked Freeman’s poetic habit. She remembered and even memorized some of the poems they recited together, and could still recall them fifty years later. One of these was T. S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” which had a mournful but philosophical air:

  Because I know that time is always time

  And place is always and only place

  And what is actual is actual only for one time

  And only for one place

  Another poem they shared was “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas. It too portrays the inexorable, melancholy, irreversible but lovely passage of time:

  Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his measure,

  Time held me in green and dying

  Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

  Verena felt that Freeman didn’t want to grow up. He wanted to remain Peter Pan. Katarina agrees with that assessment but sees it as a positive attribute. If Freeman had some childlike qualities—his curiosity, his willingness to consider strange possibilities—then this would surely be a useful part of his being a scientist.34

  In June 1956, Freeman saw his family off on their ship to Europe. Verena would be staying near the Austrian city of Salzburg. A few weeks after arriving Verena had picked up one of Freeman’s letters from the local post office. She and her children were riding through town on a bus, and Katarina asked her to read Daddy’s letter out loud. Verena began but suddenly gasped and stopped.

  An entry in Verena’s diary for June 21, 1956, caught the flash of this sensation, as if it were a bomb going off in the bus. Freeman calmly declared in this letter that on his last night in Princeton, before heading off for California, he had slept with another woman, whom he named, a woman Verena knew. The tone of his letter was not angry, but neither was it apologetic. He didn’t pretend to be self-righteous anymore, he asserted. Then came the obligatory poetic outtake, that helped illuminate the intended meaning. His text came from the work of William Blake.35 It was his short poem “Eternity”:

  He who binds to himself a joy

  Does the wined life destroy;

  But he who kisses the joy as it flies

  Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

  7. Intrinsically Safe

  Dyson as Engineer

  (1956–1957)

  What would happen, Verena asked herself, if she were to remain in Europe at the end of the summer and not go back to Princeton? Not as a permanent settlement of things—the idea was not to break completely from Freeman—but to do some mathematics research and perhaps to teach. Excellent schools were available for the children. Women were increasingly getting academic jobs. Maybe a year’s separation from Freeman would give them a chance to see things in a new light.1 Surprisingly, Freeman was not averse to the idea. Also, with Freeman’s encouragement, Verena had met with her former love, the older gentleman who had kindled such a passion in her years before.

  Not yet decided about whether to return to Princeton or stay in Salzburg, Verena planned for both possibilities. In July she interviewed a young German girl, Imme Jung, who had been recommended by a friend of Verena’s. The girl, brought to Salzburg by her father, mother, and oldest brother, made a good impression.2 The tentative plan was that she would come to America at the end of the year, after the Dysons had moved into their new home in the fall of 1956. Her job would be to help with the children and do some of the housework.

  In July Freeman’s parents, wanting to see their grandchildren, visited Verena. Lady Dyson, normally reserved, had some candid words for her daughter-in-law. Thoughtfully, she spoke of the role of women in men’s lives. Being a mistress and a wife were very different, with the role of the wife being much more difficult. If Verena and Freeman were having troubles, Mama Dyson hinted, it might be because Verena was trying too hard to play both roles.3

  On August 11, their wedding anniversary, Verena in Salzburg received roses from Freeman in San Diego. He implored her to return home, and she did.

  NUCLEAR AFFAIRS

  Ted Taylor is so cool that he once used a nuclear explosion to light a cigarette. He had designed the bomb, knew its likely yield, helped rig the test shot, and had set up a parabolic reflecting mirror at a distance of twelve miles from ground zero. At the appointed moment, and with him gingerly leaning in from the side of the mirror, the brilliant light rays streaming out of the detonation hit the reflector and converged at the focal point, where they set the tobacco aflame. Taylor saved the cigarette, what was left of it, as a souvenir.4

  Taylor had become a legend. While some bomb designers, coveting nuclear explosions in the multi-megatonnage range, proceeded to make bombs bigger and bigger, Ted Taylor was making an interesting career for himself by building downward. His specialty was crafting the smallest possible thing that would constitute a fission bomb. For example, the Davy Crockett, a warhead only twelve inches across and weighing sixty pounds, was supposed to produce a yield of only 1 kiloton. But this was all the army wanted from a short-run, gun-fired tactical nuclear weapon, perhaps enough, launched in salvos, to keep the Russian army from spilling across Western Europe.

  Taylor’s artistry with the tight packing of nuclear explosives came at a price, however, since he worried a lot about the rightness of what he was doing. Like the wartime letters the young Freeman Dyson wrote about Bomber Command to his parents, Taylor wrote soul-searching letters to his parents, who were missionaries, about why he was mixed up with such a dreadful business:

  If A bombs in their present form will make another war something which mankind cannot bear then, I say, there is only one thing to do: develop a bomb which will leave no doubt in anyone’s mind. This idea, is repulsive to most people I know, and yet I feel, as strongly as I have ever felt anything, that it is the only way out. The basic principles of a superbomb are all there. If a war with conventional weapons did not effectively wipe out civilization (as I think it would), I am certain that a superbomb would be developed during the war, as it was during the last, and would be used until civilization really was wiped out. So, again, I think that the thing to do is to find that horrible thing now, before a shooting war starts and people completely lose their ability to reason.5

  Eventually Taylor had had enough. He vowed to find some other way to use nuclear energy, one that didn’t kill people. In later years he would become a crusader for greater controls on nuclear bombs and more stringent rules about the handling of nuclear materials. His career was featured in a series of sensational articles by John McPhee in The New Yorker that later grew into a book, The Curve of Binding Energy.

  In 1956 Ted Taylor left Los Alamos in order to join General Dynamics Corporation, one of the largest defense contractors in the country. There he wanted to turn his sword into a plowshare. A plowshare is a sharp metal edge that divides difficult soil in order to furnish future food. The nuclear plowshare is a nuclear reactor, which would divide uranium nuclei in order to furnish useful electricity.

  Along with Taylor, Freeman Dyson had been invited to attend a summer-long study session in San Diego devoted to reactor design. Dyson of course had intimate knowledge of the nuclear force at the microscopic level, but was not otherwise qualified in the job of extracting macroscopic energy from a large machine. He was by then well known for his versatile use of mathematics and physics, and would probably be a welcome addition to any research team. But the real reason for Dyson’s invitation, he supposed, was his acquaintance with Edward Teller.6 Teller, with the triumph of developing the H-bomb behind him, would be putting aside his work at the new weapons lab in Livermore and coming for the summer study in San Diego too, and this in turn was a prime attraction for Dyson.

  The mastermind behind the San Diego venture was Frederic de Hoffmann. The year
before, de Hoffmann had been one of the two American delegates at a meeting in Geneva about the peaceful uses of nuclear power, one of the first times Western and Russian scientists had met. De Hoffman had been instrumental in making the event a success. A protégé of Teller’s and a Ph.D. student under Julian Schwinger, de Hoffman, at the age of thirty-one, was now a senior official at General Dynamics, where he was in charge of creating a new department, called General Atomic, devoted to designing reactors for the civilian marketplace. He would later help to found the San Diego branch of the University of California and the Salk Institute, where he was its longtime president.

  De Hoffmann wanted to build reactors. Ever since Enrico Fermi’s prototype reactor, tested beneath the football stands at the University of Chicago in 1942, nuclear reactors had been a military concern, either to spawn plutonium for use in bombs or to propel submarines. The 1955 Geneva meeting had helped break the aura of secrecy covering the whole subject of nuclear research. Many hoped that once reactor design was freed from the layers of military encumbrance it could quickly assume a central role in providing electrical power for homes and factories.

  De Hoffmann knew lots of high-ranking people in business, the military, and government. Yet he was always friendly, always had time to listen to your ideas. De Hoffmann was not only in charge of General Atomic, but he seemed to be personally trying to jump-start the entire civilian reactor endeavor.

  The headquarters for General Atomic and for the summer study was a rented schoolhouse in La Jolla, near San Diego. Like the wartime bomb effort at Los Alamos, the reactor routine in La Jolla would be a mixture of morning lectures and afternoon design work. The lectures would inform the forty or so participants, including physicists, chemists, and engineers, on all aspects of the enterprise.

  Dyson was grateful for the daily lectures, which exposed him to chemistry and engineering issues he hadn’t encountered before, and he was thrilled to work with Edward Teller. Whatever Teller had done during the Oppenheimer affair, here in San Diego he provided immediate intellectual gratification. Teller had the ability to listen to the details of a scientific or engineering problem and almost instantly summon intelligent, perhaps even decisive, things to say on the matter.