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Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson with Commentary (Collected Works)

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Some time ago the great physicist Chen Ning Yang had the brilliant idea of including, in a book of his selected works, his own comments on the papers and on the circumstances of their making. The idea was very successful, and gives birth now to this wonderful volume "Selected Papers of Freeman Dyson". The Dyson collection is a joy to read (he is a fine writer, both sacred and profane) not only by the quality, but also by the variety of his scientific production (only his scientific works are included). Perhaps you don't know, but, before becoming a physicist, Dyson had made his mark in mathematics, when still a student, to the point that, when he arrived at Cornell to study under Bethe, he was preceded by a recommendation letter written by Littlewood telling that he (Dyson) "is the best mathematician in England".Accordingly, the first papers of the collection are mathematical. Then comes the series of papers on quantum field theory which made his nam! e in physics. At a comment we learn the circumnstances under which it became possible for him to coalesce into one paper the three extant versions of QED, Schwinger's, Feynman's and Tomonaga's, which looked like different theories. The great paper "The Radiation Theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger, and Feynman" and a set of lecture notes based on it taught the new wisdom in QED to generations of physicists. Concerning physics I think, however, that his greatest work is the series of papers which proved the stability of matter tied by Coulomb interaction, which, besides its enormous intrinsic value, opened a new area of theoretical physics, where "hard analysis" was crucial, and that, perhaps, culminated with the paper of Lieb-Thirring (Lieb writes a beautiful Foreword for the volume). To give you a taste, the Contents include papers on Number Theory, Analysis, Topology, General Mathematics (including a paper beautifully entitled "A Walk Through Ramanujan's! Garden"), Quantum Electrodynamics, Field Theory (of J! ost-Lehman-Dyson fame), Statistical Mechanics, Random Matrices, Stability of Matter, Gravitation, Variation of the Fundamental Constants (triggered by Dirac's conjecture on the abnormally small size of the gravitational coupling constant), Scattering Theory, General Physics (including "Feynman's Proof of the Maxwell Equations",by which, alone, I would have bought the book), Engineering and Biology. And, in a comment, Dyson's medicine against depression: reading Ramanujan's "Notebooks" and trying to prove some of his conjectures. This is a very great book., Either buy it or ferociously fight so that the library nearest to you do it.

The book includes the classical Dyson's papers on Quantum Electrodynamics, of an exceptional historical value, his brilliant papers on vibrations with disorder, and the famous spin waves papers. These are reference points in the Theoretical Physics' literature. I appreciate especially the papers on the gravitational waves interacting with the Earth, of a distinct value, and his quasi-essays on Life in an open Universe, extraterrestrial technology, and origin of life. A superb piece is the reproduction of Feynman's proof of Maxwell equations. An enchanting book.

M Apostol, Professor of Theoretical Physics.