This is so beautiful. He's digging back into what QED actually felt like at the time. And how Feynman felt about it. And he articulates in his expression how deeply impressed he was by Feynman's ideas. I saw Freeman Dyson once when he gave a lecture at Aberdeen University where I was studying Physics. I'd recently read his book "Disturbing The Universe", and wanted to tell him how much I'd liked it but was too fearful to approach him. Don't be fearful kids.
I really admire the fact that Dyson only utters wonderfully positive commentaries about his old friends and colleagues. The man has always been a class act, in every sense of the word. Unlike Gell-Mann who lamentably trashed just about everyone, every chance he got.
@@edwardjones2202 Yes, but he did it in a nice way, and talked about how the remained good friends. And pretty much anyone besides Bethe and Feynman and a few other luminaries would probably appear slow to Dyson!
@@Dicklesberg Others such as, Fermi, von Neumann, and Oppy who were generally considered to be lightening fast in their ability to apprehend new ideas, make exceedingly fast approximation calculations, or generally known to be cleaver. By those who knew him, von Neumann was generally thought to be dramatically more capable than Einstein. Of course, it is not always speed that wins a race. Einstein probably succeeded because he was both determined and had a nearly unmatched nose for finding a solvable problem that meant something, and so is among the tiny few scientists to become famous across generations.
@Knossos22 That is true. Considering the kind of people who were trying to attack the same problems as him(Hilbert and other giants), Einstein's endeavors are truly remarkable. Also, the lack of awareness regarding von Neumann's legacy, as I see it, is due to his nature of not caring about credit. John von Neumann had this immense presence in almost every budding field of ideas of that era, but it is almost as if he didn't care about being known as one of the pioneers.
What a great, wonderful series -Dyson has been a personal hero in my own journey in understanding advanced physics. These snippets of a fascinating era in theoretical physics are pure gold. To listen to such a great theorist talking so clearly and profoundly is a joy.
Dyson clearly respected Feynman however I don't think that statement was about deference. It was an acknowledgment of their two different thinking styles. Feynman, like Einstein, was a visual thinker. Dyson was analytical. Its interesting that Feynman was aware of where his strong suit lay in terms of visual thinking. He knew he wasn't analytical and moved away from trying to solve problems using such a technique. Instead he invented his own methodologies (e.g. Feynman diagrams) which produced the same solution in a manner that he could understand. There's probably a lesson in there for all of us: play to your strengths. I wonder how the purists of the time (i.e. those who saw a rigorous analytical solution as the only acceptable method for doing physics) would have felt about Feynman?
wongawonga1000 this is at odds with what his wife Gwynneth said about Feynman. She complained that he spent all his time at home calculating integrals. Addendum: I’d say that Feynman knew and used the analytical but « integrated » the geometric and visual with the analytical in new ways
@@dougr.2398 I guess all could be Feynman or Dyson in their different fields of interest if they are driven passionately in ones works n carelessly in everything else.
i'm not smart enough to understand particle physics but I could watch this humble man for hoursssssss. amazing humbleness eventhough he was one of the giants
Hey A huge multidimensional thanks to the guy(s) who uploaded these videos..... I love them....... can you do more such interview videos of other physicists ???? it would be applause worthy and a great thing GOOD JOB DONE
Interesting that he compares Feynman with Dirac. Such different personalities, and yet so close in their approaches. Yet there were alsoo differences; for instance, Dirac would lead his line of though believing in the beauty of the equations, while Feynman way of thinking was based on physical intuition.
Its fascinating to listen to these people whose minds work entirely differently than normal people. You can feel the power of their intellect just observing them.
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I get the impression that Dyson is referring to the ever-useful Feynman diagrams for particle physics. I had initially thought that Dyson meant that Feynman thought exclusively in terms of pictures when doing calculations, which would be absolutely incredible if it were the case. I can't even begin to fathom how a person would ever be able to do mathematics without actually doing the mathematics. How would the pictures produce an answer without any previous steps to coax out an answer? Perhaps Feynman's mathematical intuition was so powerful that he really did think in pictures and the Feynman diagrams were just a systemized form of what he did naturally anyways. The man's thought process will forever remain a mystery, I suppose.
As far as I can tell, Feynman essentially worked out the QED Feynman rules (i.e. the recipe for working out the diagrams and the mathematical expressions they represent) without formally deriving them from the quantum field theory of QED. I can imagine it must have been pretty amazing at the time that such a shortcut actually worked, since no one really understood its connection to the more "old-school" QFT approach, which involves field operators, commutation relations, and other rather tedious maths. As Dyson describes later on in this interview, he eventually worked out that the connection was actually quite a simple one, and formalised the method by which one could systematically derive the Feynman rules so that you could then correctly draw the diagrams and quickly determine the probability amplitudes. Dyson's approach is now the one taught in pretty much every introductory QFT course.
@@reecesweet6349 There are limits to studying. I thought it would be that way too when I studied physics, but at some point you should respect your own limits, and acknowledge that your mental sanity is more important than theoretical physics. But this is how you learn who you are: you try really hard to be like those you admire, and at some point you will fail to do so. These failures are uniquely yours, and they define you, and you learn your limits, and you learn that you should respect your limits in order to be a happy human being.
I've always had some difficulty listening to Feynman for more than a minute. He would spew questions and ideas completely unfiltered. Though he was brilliant I would invariably feel like I was listening to a buffoon and a loudmouth and obviously he was neither.
Freeman Dyson would be more credible had earned a Ph.D. His Dyson Sphere is bad science fiction which he would never advocate if he had learned to defend a thesis. To his discredit he says that no one needs a Ph.D. That is pompous nonsense. He lives in the USA where 2.0% of the population has earned a Ph.D. He is not well educated, pompous and an author of science. Jouralism loves a person who is on the same level as they, pompous, poorly educated and authors of science fiction.
he didn’t even enjoy the Dyson Sphere idea entirely. he was fascinated by it, and the public blew it up and assigned it to him as one of his “principle works”, regardless of his opinion on the matter
Dyson's reputation rests on his works, starting with papers published in the 1940s by the London Mathematical Society. An early paper got him his Fellowship at Trinity College. But he could have submitted them elsewhere: he was not obliged to get his nihil obstat and imprimatur from his employer.
These interviews are pure gold.
Glad you like them. More on their way!
Yeah, fascinating.
Pure
RIP Dr. Dyson :(
@@webofstories yes great insides of brilliant people, I already adopted a lot of wisdome to my life.
This is so beautiful. He's digging back into what QED actually felt like at the time. And how Feynman felt about it. And he articulates in his expression how deeply impressed he was by Feynman's ideas. I saw Freeman Dyson once when he gave a lecture at Aberdeen University where I was studying Physics. I'd recently read his book "Disturbing The Universe", and wanted to tell him how much I'd liked it but was too fearful to approach him. Don't be fearful kids.
I really admire the fact that Dyson only utters wonderfully positive commentaries about his old friends and colleagues. The man has always been a class act, in every sense of the word. Unlike Gell-Mann who lamentably trashed just about everyone, every chance he got.
He just described Richard Scaletter as painfully slow in the previous video!
@@edwardjones2202 Yes, but he did it in a nice way, and talked about how the remained good friends. And pretty much anyone besides Bethe and Feynman and a few other luminaries would probably appear slow to Dyson!
@@Dicklesberg Others such as, Fermi, von Neumann, and Oppy who were generally considered to be lightening fast in their ability to apprehend new ideas, make exceedingly fast approximation calculations, or generally known to be cleaver. By those who knew him, von Neumann was generally thought to be dramatically more capable than Einstein. Of course, it is not always speed that wins a race. Einstein probably succeeded because he was both determined and had a nearly unmatched nose for finding a solvable problem that meant something, and so is among the tiny few scientists to become famous across generations.
@Knossos22 That is true. Considering the kind of people who were trying to attack the same problems as him(Hilbert and other giants), Einstein's endeavors are truly remarkable. Also, the lack of awareness regarding von Neumann's legacy, as I see it, is due to his nature of not caring about credit. John von Neumann had this immense presence in almost every budding field of ideas of that era, but it is almost as if he didn't care about being known as one of the pioneers.
Gell-Mann had his own style. Unless you are some exceptional mathematician or physicist you shouldn’t throw stones
He is still astounded by Feynman. You can see a small smile of appreciation at each point. Just stunning.
I can listen to Freeman all day. There's such a strong and soothing conviction in his voice.
You can see in his eyes how much he admired Feynman - sort of like a kid talking about meeting his sporting idol.
What a great, wonderful series -Dyson has been a personal hero in my own journey in understanding advanced physics. These snippets of a fascinating era in theoretical physics are pure gold. To listen to such a great theorist talking so clearly and profoundly is a joy.
"I was clearly not his kind of animal", such deference for Feynman and humility by Dyson.
Dyson clearly respected Feynman however I don't think that statement was about deference. It was an acknowledgment of their two different thinking styles. Feynman, like Einstein, was a visual thinker. Dyson was analytical.
Its interesting that Feynman was aware of where his strong suit lay in terms of visual thinking. He knew he wasn't analytical and moved away from trying to solve problems using such a technique. Instead he invented his own methodologies (e.g. Feynman diagrams) which produced the same solution in a manner that he could understand. There's probably a lesson in there for all of us: play to your strengths.
I wonder how the purists of the time (i.e. those who saw a rigorous analytical solution as the only acceptable method for doing physics) would have felt about Feynman?
@@wongawonga1000 shut up wonga.
wongawonga1000 this is at odds with what his wife Gwynneth said about Feynman. She complained that he spent all his time at home calculating integrals. Addendum: I’d say that Feynman knew and used the analytical but « integrated » the geometric and visual with the analytical in new ways
@@dougr.2398 I guess all could be Feynman or Dyson in their different fields of interest if they are driven passionately in ones works n carelessly in everything else.
123 456 interesting supposition.
i'm not smart enough to understand particle physics but I could watch this humble man for hoursssssss.
amazing humbleness eventhough he was one of the giants
Just discovered these interviews. Priceless. Timeless.
You can see in his eyes when he talk about Feynman still wondering " where the hell did that specimen come from " that's priceless
It would be an honor to have Feynman to bluntly tell me to exit the room.
"GET OUT!!!!" ...... (give me 10 minutes and come back then.)
Long live Freeman Dyson. Just love watching his modesty inspire of being one of the best brain in
That last line went off a cliff.
And to think he wasted his time making vacuum cleaners.
😂😂😂
Hahahaa
Damn good vacuum cleaners though.
more so to make billions
Hey A huge multidimensional thanks to the guy(s) who uploaded these videos.....
I love them.......
can you do more such interview videos of other physicists ????
it would be applause worthy and a great thing
GOOD JOB DONE
Interesting that he compares Feynman with Dirac. Such different personalities, and yet so close in their approaches. Yet there were alsoo differences; for instance, Dirac would lead his line of though believing in the beauty of the equations, while Feynman way of thinking was based on physical intuition.
Feynman's way was to write down the answer. Genius in a nutshell.
Its fascinating to listen to these people whose minds work entirely differently than normal people. You can feel the power of their intellect just observing them.
Tremendous!! Wonderful to watch
Superb interviews --pity onoy a few thousand see them...worth their weight in gold to students of these subjects all kinds of scientists...
Such a great story teller.
Thank you very much for the upload!
We're delighted that you're enjoying watching these recordings. We're in the process of uploading more Web of Stories videos to TH-cam, so watch this space!
👍
RIP Freeman ♥
Fabulous interview ❤️👍
I want to invent a time machine exclusively to go back in time and be adopted by Richard Feynman.
Oh dear
He will tell you 'get out' if busy!
You know, I think Feynman seems like he was a really self absorbed person. Maybe great for science, but I'm not so sure he'd be a great parent.
He'd have no time for you until his retirement, then he would only have some.
@@Antoinetheman Feynman spend a great amount of his time with his family.
He loves say Family is important like his father.
He talks about "Dick" like an accountant would talk about his extremely creative and shady boss. Fun to imagine :-)
I get the impression that Dyson is referring to the ever-useful Feynman diagrams for particle physics. I had initially thought that Dyson meant that Feynman thought exclusively in terms of pictures when doing calculations, which would be absolutely incredible if it were the case. I can't even begin to fathom how a person would ever be able to do mathematics without actually doing the mathematics. How would the pictures produce an answer without any previous steps to coax out an answer? Perhaps Feynman's mathematical intuition was so powerful that he really did think in pictures and the Feynman diagrams were just a systemized form of what he did naturally anyways. The man's thought process will forever remain a mystery, I suppose.
I had an ecstatic vision of the zeta function as golden rings once. Thus is my power.
As far as I can tell, Feynman essentially worked out the QED Feynman rules (i.e. the recipe for working out the diagrams and the mathematical expressions they represent) without formally deriving them from the quantum field theory of QED. I can imagine it must have been pretty amazing at the time that such a shortcut actually worked, since no one really understood its connection to the more "old-school" QFT approach, which involves field operators, commutation relations, and other rather tedious maths. As Dyson describes later on in this interview, he eventually worked out that the connection was actually quite a simple one, and formalised the method by which one could systematically derive the Feynman rules so that you could then correctly draw the diagrams and quickly determine the probability amplitudes. Dyson's approach is now the one taught in pretty much every introductory QFT course.
Amazing man
What I like about these comments on the Dyson interview is how they tell us a lot about the individual commentator but very little about Dyson.
lol @ Feynman driving like a madman with a worried Freeman Dyson in the passenger seat xD
this one is excellent
@ 5:24 Feynman and Field Theory. Or better, Feynman without Field Theory.
Great Man,RIP
I love his hoovers.
That joke sucks
What are the practical implications of this Lamb shift?
Sorry for the immaturity but I just had to laugh after he said dick. I'm sorry hahahaha
there is more of this interview somewhere, I'd love to see it.
Long live freedom and democratic equality
Damn I wish I had the brain to get this stuff...sounds fascinating!
Edward Jones study study study
Study quantum physics
@aboctok haha thanks! I study lots of stuff but I think we all have limits and this is mine 😄
@@edwardjones2202 those who push limits are remembered forever.
@@reecesweet6349 There are limits to studying. I thought it would be that way too when I studied physics, but at some point you should respect your own limits, and acknowledge that your mental sanity is more important than theoretical physics. But this is how you learn who you are: you try really hard to be like those you admire, and at some point you will fail to do so. These failures are uniquely yours, and they define you, and you learn your limits, and you learn that you should respect your limits in order to be a happy human being.
So he made up rules. So bad ass
You gotta love his vacuums.
Dick Feynmann - is that a name or an imperative sentence???
It's a compliment
Richard Feynman!
I've always had some difficulty listening to Feynman for more than a minute. He would spew questions and ideas completely unfiltered. Though he was brilliant I would invariably feel like I was listening to a buffoon and a loudmouth and obviously he was neither.
Dick's Tricks & Diagrams.
So I came because uramichi oniisan....
🚶🏻♀️
Get out haha
Freeman Dyson would be more credible had earned a Ph.D. His Dyson Sphere is bad science fiction which he would never advocate if he had learned to defend a thesis. To his discredit he says that no one needs a Ph.D. That is pompous nonsense. He lives in the USA where 2.0% of the population has earned a Ph.D. He is not well educated, pompous and an author of science. Jouralism loves a person who is on the same level as they, pompous, poorly educated and authors of science fiction.
He argued relevantly against the system of PhD. See his visit to Fermi, which left four theses in tatters in ten minutes.
he didn’t even enjoy the Dyson Sphere idea entirely. he was fascinated by it, and the public blew it up and assigned it to him as one of his “principle works”, regardless of his opinion on the matter
Dyson's reputation rests on his works, starting with papers published in the 1940s by the London Mathematical Society. An early paper got him his Fellowship at Trinity College. But he could have submitted them elsewhere: he was not obliged to get his nihil obstat and imprimatur from his employer.
Bizarre comment. He can't be learned or incredibly smart if he doesn't have a particular badge?
How many students did he have? He was on the cusp of a Nobel
Oppenheimer apologised to him
Who are you
Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.