Freeman Dyson

Freeman John Dyson (1923 to 2020) was a British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician, born in Crowthorne in Berkshire, who worked across quantum field theory, astrophysics, nuclear physics and engineering. In 1958 he was a member of the team under Edward Teller that designed TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor still used in hospitals and universities to produce medical isotopes. From 1957 to 1961 he worked on Project Orion, a proposal for spaceflight by nuclear pulse propulsion that was abandoned in 1965. His name is attached to the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment about how a spacefaring civilization could meet its energy needs by capturing a star's output. He received the Max Planck Medal in 1969 and the Wolf Prize in 1981, and he spent his later career at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.