From Eros to Gaia

New York: Pantheon Books [A Cornelia & Michael Bessie Book], 1992. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. xi, [1], 371, [1] pages. This collection of essays has sections on Stories, Things, Institutions, Politics, Books and People. There are Bibliographical Notes and an Index. Signed by the author on the fep. Dyson presents a selection of essays that include discussions of his early fascination with science and space, his contemporary analyses of the politics of "smart" weapons, and more. Freeman John Dyson FRS (15 December 1923 - 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, quantum mechanics, condensed matter, nuclear physics, and engineering. He was Professor Emeritus in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dyson originated several concepts that bear his name, such as Dyson's transform, a technique in additive number theory, which he developed as part of his proof of Mann's theorem; the Dyson tree, a hypothetical genetically engineered plant capable of growing in a comet; the Dyson series, a perturbative series where each term is represented by Feynman diagrams; the Dyson sphere, a thought experiment to explain how a space-faring civilization would meet its energy requirements with a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output; and Dyson's eternal intelligence, a means by which an immortal society of intelligent beings in an open universe could escape the prospect of the heat death of the universe by extending subjective time to infinity while expending only a finite amount of energy. From Eros to Gaia is a nonfiction scientific book of 35 non-technical writings by Freeman J. Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. This book is a collection of essays written from 1933 (when Dyson was nine years old) to 1990. It was originally published by Pantheon Books in 1992. The book begins with Dyson's juvenile 1933 science fiction story concerning the asteroid Eros. The pieces in the collection range over anecdotal history, expository popular-science articles, lectures on public policy related to science, political issues concerning problems created by science and technology, book reviews, and people (known personally by Dyson) such as Richard Feynman, Paul Dirac, and Helen Dukas. The book ends with Dyson's contribution Gaia to Clifton Fadiman's 1990 collection Living Philosophies. The concluding essay deals with the value and potential of the emerging Gaia philosophy. Along with articles on quantum field theory and the mystery of unaccounted-for carbon in the biosphere, there are tributes to Richard Feynman and Paul Dirac, a travel sketch on Armenia and Dyson's proposed 60-year program for space science, including manned missions to Mars. The book has been translated into Spanish (1994), French (1995), and Japanese (2005).