In Maker of Patterns, Freeman Dyson weaves a quilt sewn from the colorful memories of the early years of his life ... Maker of Patterns reveals a glimpse into the keenly curious mind and the passionate life of one of our greatest scientists and public figures.
The physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson is an interesting man, and, at the age of 94, he no doubt has a fascinating story to tell about his long and productive life. This book, however, does not contain that story—at least, not all of it and not in the form that many of us would have wished ... Overall, there is much in the letters collected here to enjoy; Mr. Dyson writes wonderfully well. But I am surely not alone in wishing that a man so brilliant, who has lived such an interesting life, had, at the end of his days, endeavored to write a proper autobiography. As Wittgenstein once observed, 'Raisins might be the best thing about a cake; but a bag of raisins is not better than a cake.'
As a reader, I was enthralled by this collection of Freeman Dyson’s letters. But as a biographer, I am most annoyed with him for having squirreled all these missives away ... Maker of Patterns is not autobiography. That would require something more than just the long letters reproduced here, occasionally annotated with italicized commentary. But these letters will delight any reader with their often contrarian observations. Dyson is an excellent witness, an acute observer of personality and human foibles. This volume should make any reader pine for a deep memoir.
The patterns Dyson says he made were first those of ideas in mathematics and physics, and then those in his writing about literature and history. Readers might hope that Dyson’s own pattern — the reference frame in which his remarkable range becomes a coherent whole — would be found in his letters. As a writer who has interviewed Dyson, I would advise against such hope. The letters read like a travel journal written for people he loves and trusts ... Maybe with some people, you don’t look for patterns. You just enjoy their multivariate company.
In an effective dual narrative, he shares his life through letters spanning 1941 to 1978 as well as present-day reflections ... Covering a dizzying array of events, this long volume intimately chronicles both the sweet and bitter parts of 'the daily life of an ordinary scientist doing ordinary work.'
Advocates of science will find in Dyson an admirable model. Why go to Mars when we could irrigate the Sahara, he asks. The science of space travel may be 10 times the benefit in the end, he writes, but 'the main purpose is a general enlargement of human horizons.' A pleasure for science students and particularly of science humanely practiced.
As an autobiography, Maker of Patterns is necessarily truncated, beginning with Dyson’s matriculation at Cambridge University and ending with his 25th year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a kind of Olympus for physicists, where he remains as professor emeritus. In the preface, he simply notes that ‘the second half of a life is usually less interesting than the first half.’
