George Dyson (science historian)

• 1. Introduction

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  George Dyson was born on the 26th of March 1953 into a family of remarkable minds. His father was the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson. His mother was the mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson. His grandfather was the composer George Dyson. And yet, at sixteen years old, George left all of that behind and moved to British Columbia to spend his days paddling kayaks.

  For the next two decades, he would design boats, research the voyages of indigenous peoples, and eventually build himself a treehouse 30 metres above the shore of Burrard Inlet. He became a Canadian citizen. He grew estranged from his famous father.

  What draws a boy from that world toward a life of wilderness and watercraft? And how does that same man end up writing a book described as a creation myth of the digital universe? These are the questions worth sitting with.

• 2. Life in the Trees

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  Kenneth Brower documented Dyson's early years in a book called The Starship and the Canoe. From 1972 to 1975, Dyson lived in a treehouse he constructed himself from salvaged materials, perched 30 metres above Burrard Inlet in British Columbia. That is roughly the height of a ten-story building.

  For twenty years, British Columbia was his home. He spent that time researching historic voyages, studying native peoples, and navigating the Inside Passage. During this period, he was estranged from his father, Freeman Dyson, for some time.

  The treehouse and the estrangement would both eventually become part of the public record. Brian E. Blank, reviewing one of Dyson's later books, noted that the eccentricities of the work did not seem inconsistent with what one might imagine from a man who once lived for three years in a treehouse 95 feet above the ground.

• 3. Baidarka and the Kayak Revival

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  Dyson's first book appeared in 1986 under the title Baidarka. It traced the history of the Aleutian kayak, following how Russian fur traders reshaped the vessel's design over time, and then described how Dyson adapted that design using modern materials.

  He did not simply write about baidarkas. He became the founder and owner of Dyson, Baidarka and Company, a firm that designs Aleut-style skin kayaks. He is credited with reviving the baidarka style of kayak. Two decades of paddling, researching, and building boats had turned into an enterprise and a lasting contribution to the craft.

  The same year that Baidarka was published, The Starship and the Canoe also appeared, giving readers Kenneth Brower's account of the younger Dyson's unusual upbringing and his relationship with his father.

• 4. Darwin, Orion, and Bigger Ideas

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  After Baidarka, Dyson's writing moved toward the history of technology on a much larger scale. Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965 examined a remarkable and largely forgotten chapter of space exploration. Darwin Among the Machines took on nothing less than the question of global intelligence.

  In Darwin Among the Machines, Dyson expanded on a premise first set out by Samuel Butler in an 1863 article of the same name. Dyson's argument was that the Internet functions as a living, sentient being. It was a bold claim, and it established him as a writer willing to make large, uncomfortable arguments from historical evidence.

  Dyson was also a frequent contributor to Edge.org between 1998 and 2019, a platform known for hosting long-form intellectual exchange among scientists, technologists, and thinkers.

• 5. Turing's Cathedral

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  Dyson's fourth book, published in 2012, carried Alan Turing's name in its title but placed John von Neumann at its center. Turing's Cathedral focused on von Neumann's 1946 effort to build a computer at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, a machine known as the IAS machine. That same machine, built later at Los Alamos Laboratory, became known as MANIAC I.

  To research the book, Dyson interviewed people who had known von Neumann personally, including his own father, Freeman Dyson. The access was extraordinary, and the book has been described as a creation myth of the digital universe.

  Reviews were mostly positive. Brian E. Blank called it an idiosyncratic, undisciplined, crazy quilt of a book, and then concluded that for all its flaws and waywardness, it amply rewards its readers. The Los Angeles Times named it a finalist for its 2012 Book Prize in the science and technology category, and the University of California Berkeley chose it for its annual On the Same Page program for the academic year 2013-14.

• 6. Princeton and the Academy

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  Dyson held a position as visiting lecturer and research associate at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College. He also served as Director's Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in 2002-03. That is the same institution where von Neumann built the machine at the heart of Turing's Cathedral, which gives that residency a particular resonance.

  He lives and works in Bellingham, Washington. His sister is the technology analyst Esther Dyson. His most recent book listed among his works is Analogia: The Entangled Destinies of Nature, Human Beings and Machines, a title that extends the territory he staked out in Darwin Among the Machines into new ground.