经济学人下载:物理学家弗里曼·戴森(1)

Freeman Dyson, physicist and big thinker, died on February 28th, aged 96. 

物理学家、伟大的思想家弗里曼·戴森于2月28日逝世，享年96岁。

There are, wrote Freeman Dyson towards the end of his long life, two different kinds of mathematicians. Some are birds, who fly high, surveying the broad vistas and spotting unexpected links between different bits of the mathematical landscape. Others are frogs, who prefer to be up close and on the ground, delighting in the details and the beauty of the flowers. He counted himself among the frogs, and started there. 

弗里曼·戴森在他漫长生命的最后写道，世上有两种不同的数学家。有些数学家是鸟类，他们飞得很高，喜欢观察广阔的远景，发现数学景观的不同部分之间意 想不到的联系。其他的数学家是青蛙，他们更喜欢靠近地面，喜欢花朵的细节和美丽。他把自己看做青蛙那一类数学家，他也是从那里开始。

At the age of 24 he made a fundamental contribution to the study of Diophantine equations, a branch of mathematics dating back to the ancient Greeks. A year later he resolved a tricky conundrum in quantum electrodynamics, a field so new that it had hardly existed when he was born. But already the airborne tendencies were stirring. He was fascinated by biology, engineering, international relations and, in particular, physics, at which he became a master. For him, it was an ideal subject. Its mathematical underpinnings might be abstruse and theoretical, but in the 20th century those theories handed blunt, world-changing power to nations that could master their applications. 

24岁时，弗里曼对丢番图方程的研究做出了根本性的贡献，它是数学的一个分支，可追溯到古希腊。一年后，弗里曼解决了量子电动力学中一个棘手的难题，这是一个在他出生时几乎不存在的新领域。但其趋势已经开始出现。他对生物学、工程学、国际关系学，特别是物理学很感兴趣，并成为了物理学大师。对弗里曼来说，这是一个理想的学科。它的数学基础可能是深奥和理论性的，但在20世纪，这些理论把直接的、改变世界的力量交给了能够掌握其应用的国家。 

In the second world war, he applied his mathematics at Britain's Bomber Command to calculate the most destructive (but safe) formations for the planes to fly in. After the war, when he moved to the Institute for Advanced study in Princeton, he rubbed shoulders with both Albert Einstein, whose theorising on relativity he had revered since boyhood, and Robert Oppenheimer, who had developed the atomic bomb. 

在第二次世界大战中，弗里曼在英国轰炸机司令部应用了他的数学，计算最具破坏性(但是得安全)的飞机飞行阵型。战后，当弗里曼搬到普林斯顿高等研究院时，他与阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦有过交情，他从小就尊崇爱因斯坦的相对论理论，还有罗伯特·奥本海默，原子弹的发明者。