Maker of Patterns

Freeman Dyson's letters, written between 1940 and the late 1970s and now annotated, form a record of his life and of the science around him. They portray leading figures of modern science including Richard Feynman, Hans Bethe, Robert Oppenheimer and Stephen Hawking, and follow the work on some of the hardest problems in twentieth-century physics. Dyson reflects on the Second World War, the moral questions raised by nuclear development, the difficulties of the space program and the demands of bringing up six children. Read together, the letters work as an eyewitness account of scientific discoveries that shaped the modern world.

Paul Graham called it wonderful, saying that collections of letters are rarely very good but that this one reads as well as an autobiography or better, and is about a very interesting man.