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FREEMAN DYSON Freeman John Dyson, at 85, lives quietly in Princeton, NJ for more than half a century. He had been a great scholar, a physicist, lately however since coming out of the closet as far as the global warming is concerned Dyson feels there is noise all around him. Dyson proposed that whatever the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants grow. He added the caveat that C 02 levels soared too high they could be soothed by mass cultivation of specially bred carbon eating trees. Dyson has been awarded 21 honorary degrees from various Universities. He got criticized by professors around him as gone out of his beautiful mind.
But there are a few other scientists like William Press, University of Texas who calls him infinitely smart. Dyson, a math prodigy, came to the USA at 23 and contributed greatly to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamics theory, chose to peruse unusual pursuits but managed to live a more original life. Dyson's gifts are clarity in interpretations, ability to grasp what many scientists do. His thoughts about how science work appear in a series of lucid, elegant books for lay persons or nonspecialists and have made him a trusted arbiter of ideas ranging far beyond physics. Dyson has authored more than a dozen books including Origins of Life (1999) which depicts recent discoveries by biologists and geologists into an evolution of the double-origin hypothesis, the possibility that life began twice. Disturbing the Universe (1979) tries among other things to reconcile science and humanity.
Weapons and Hope (1984) is on the meaning and danger of nuclear weapons that won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Dyson's books display masterly control of complex matters that smart young people read him and want to become scientists, older citizens, finish his books and feel smart! Dyson always gazed into the beyond. As a boy, he designed rocket ships to explore stars and in midlife he helped designing an American spacecraft to be powered by exploding atomic bombs-a secret Air force project known as Orion. Dyson dreams about people taking to space travel to asteroids and comets via solar sail craft. Dyson is sure that our current age of computers will give way to the age of domesticated biotechnology-in his book Infinite in All Directions (1988) He imagines people will grow furniture, grow pet dinosaurs for their kids, carbon eating trees, termites to devour automobiles, a potato growing on the red dry surface of Mars, a collision avoiding car.
When criticisms cropped up on his essays on climate change, he remains an undeterred octogenarian futurist. He says I dont predict things I am expressing possibilities... Things that could happen... The purpose of thinking about the future is not to predict it but to raise peoples hopes. Dyson left England, which was still stricken by two bloody world wars to become an optimistic American immigrant. According to physicist Marvin Gold berger, You point Freeman at a problem and hell solve it.
He is extraordinarily powerful. Though he feels climate change is a big scientific issue, as other nuclear weapons and rural poverty, he is not convinced that climate change is a great problem. He accuses Al Gore and James Hancen of NASA calling the film Inconvenient Truth, relying too much on computer generated matters as icecap melts, ocean rise, storms and plagues sweep the earth. Dyson blames the twosomes lousy science distracting public attentionfrommore serious and more immediate dangers to the planetHancens objections to coal as a big pollutant, Dyson feels is overstated, taking into account the carbon dioxide it releases.
More sea level rise displaces millions, glaciers melt-threaten food supplies for a billion more, ocean acidification undermine food supplies for another billion Dyson says a warming climate could be forestalling a new ice age! Is he wrong? His worry is about evils like war, poverty and unemployment. True to coming from English conservative Christian family, Humans, he says, have a duty to reconstruct nature for their survival. Dyson emphasizes on the usage of coal-affordable, inexpensive. China and India move from poverty to middle class prosperity-Dyson sees coal as the interim kindling instrument of progress.
Dyson predicts in 50 years solar energy will become cheap and abundant and there are many good reasons for preferring it to coal, according to Dyson, global warming has become a party line Dyson became part of the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2000 he was the winner of $ one million Templeton Prize for Science and Religion which previously had been given to Mother Teresa and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. His clash with Hancen on Global Warming has become world known. He considers humane solutions to dire problems.
Dyson was a prodigy in Math, had low profile schooling but thrived when he entered Winchester College. He was disgusted by the World Wars but strangely Dyson always loved explosions! In 1945 gave up Math to Physics. When he moved to the US, he worked with Hans Beth to describe the behaviors of atoms and electrons emitting and absorbing light. He helped in designing ORION which would explode to propel astronauts toward the orbit, moon and beyond. Dyson's patented TRIGA a small isotope machine is still used in hospitals for medical diagnostics.
Dyson hates wars-wars against Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq do not have his heart and approval. He supported and loves Obama and loathes Bush. His wife for 50 years (since 1958) Image writes-he is playful, curios, wise, integrated not in theory but in his life, all his dreams of things. He is a sage and friendly elf, laughs heartily, smiles strangely dynamic! He travels widely, gives talks to churches and colleges against nuclear weapons. He still feels to point to Katrina and make clear connections to global warming is very misleading.
Intellectuals world over feel that the Nobel Prize evaded him because of his consistent no commitment for his field physics. Anyway one cannot stop thinking proud of oneself to be a contemporary for this great scientist, physicist Freeman Dyson! Article by Nicholas Dawidoff, appeared in the 29 th March 2009 NYT.
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Research essay sample on Carbon Dioxide Nuclear Weapons
