Just One Word: Plastics

Freeman Dyson — professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and author of a number of books, among which are, Disturbing the Universe, and, Origins of Life — has a little story to tell.

Sixty years ago, when I was a young and arrogant physicist, I tried to predict the future of physics and biology. My prediction was an extreme example of wrongness, perhaps a world record in the category of wrong predictions. I was giving advice about future employment to [a young physicist whom I first met in 1945 before World War 2 had come to an end]. [I met him] in Fanum House, a dismal office building in London where the Royal Navy kept a staff of scientists. [He] had been working for the Royal Navy for a long time and was depressed and discouraged. He said he had missed his chance of ever amounting to anything as a scientist. Before World War 2, he had started a promising career as a physicist. But then the war hit him at the worst time, putting a stop to his work in physics and keeping him away from science for six years. The six best years of his life, squandered on naval intelligence, lost and gone forever. [He] was good at naval intelligence, and did important work for the navy. But military intelligence bears the same relation to intelligence as military music bears to music. After six years doing this kind of intelligence, it was far too late for [him] to start all over again as a student and relearn all the stuff he had forgotten. No wonder he was depressed. I came away from Fanum House thinking, “How sad. Such a bright chap. If it hadn't been for the war, he would probably have been quite a good scientist”.

A year later, I met [him] again. The war was over and he was much more cheerful. He said he was thinking of giving up physics and making a completely fresh start as a biologist. He said the most exciting science for the next twenty years would be in biology and not in physics. I was then twenty-two years old and very sure of myself. I said, “No, you're wrong. In the long run biology will be more exciting, but not yet. The next twenty years will still belong to physics. If you switch to biology now, you will be too old to do the exciting stuff when biology finally takes off”. Fortunately, he didn't listen to me.

The young physicist who rejected Dr. Dyson's advice was Francis Crick, in 1953 co-discoverer with Jim Watson of the double helix structure of DNA.

(The above anecdote was excerpted from the article, Heretical Thoughts About Science And Society, by Freeman Dyson.)