Disturbing the Universe (review)

Abstract

reviews 267 some interesting things about style and how he taught himself to write. He concludes that he should "aim at lucidity, simplicity, and euphony." Both these biographies reflect that admirable quality of style. The Gittings' are particularly effective in their selettion of quotations—often no more than a phrase—from letters, memoirs, and the like, to enliven the text or to give authoritative support to their judgments. Although many of these quotations are from Florence's letters, some of the remarks come from others. One of the brighter figures in the rather gloomy Hardy circle was his younger sister Katherine , whom I myself remember well in her eighties as full of humor and lightness when I visited her one summer day in 1938. Kay-Robinson, too, portrays Kate, but reveals a sharper side of her personality. The Gittings' charaaerize Kate, Thomas, and Florence in three short sentences : Florence and Hardy celebrated the last day of 1913 with a visit to Emma 's grave. Kate Hardy, who saw them at Stinsford churchyard, remarked cheerfully that she "never saw two such dismal 'critters' in her life." Already the pattern of the future was being laid down. They have a knack for the incisive short sentence which concentrates one's attention on an amusing, or ironic, or essential point in the life. Kay-Robinson's style is more characterized by perceptive generalizations backed up by pertinent facts. One would have to conclude that the Hardy-Emma relationship was not only far stronger than the Hardy-Florence one, but that it was Emma who was Queen, while Florence was belated consort. Future students of the life and works of Thomas Hardy will be greatly indebted to both these biographies. Donald J. Winslow Boston University Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. 283 pp. $12.95. Freeman Dyson, a distinguished physicist, has published a volume of reminiscences which was well-reviewed in all the best places from Science to The New York Times Book Review. It was serialized in The New Yorker and Dyson plugged it on the talk shows. Few physicists make the limelight. Dyson's one-time boss, Robert Oppenheimer, and Edward Teller are exceptions—but for political reasons. Every century one or two giants become widely known for their revolutionary achievements. Our giants are Einstein and Bohr. Fermi maybe. The 268 biography Vol. 3, No. 3 public hears little about the others, Dirac or Feynman, for example. Most physicists are shy, many of them are asocial, or even anti-social. They don't crave the limelight nor does it seek them. The public looks on scientists as priests annointed into unfathomable secrets of nature, able by special means to unlock the energy of the stars. So when a noted physicist publishes his memoirs in The New Yorker something out of the ordinary is happening. Who is Dyson and why do the New Yorkers love him? Dyson was a prodigiously talented mathematician who came to the U.S. from England after World War II and studied with leading American physicists; made a smashing coup by cementing together two basic but apparently divergent views of subatomic interattions; caught the eye of Robert Oppenheimer (then Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton); and has been at The Institute ever since. In 1960 he vociferously opposed the atmospheric test ban treaty , and two years later, as a member of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, reversed himself and testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in favor of the treaty. All impressive achievements, but hardly such as would make you expect to find him featured in the magazine the stewardess hands you on your flight to L.A. Is Dyson a physicist of the first rank, a thinker like Bohr or Dirac who conceived striking new schemes for explaining the basic properties and behavior of matter? First of all he is not so much a physicist as a mathematician and something of a gypsy fiddler at that. His achievement in combining two apparently divergent views of subatomic interactions was impressive but did not fundamentally change the way physicists viewed matter. Instead it reconciled the views of two other physicists, Richard Feynman...