Hermann Bondi: The adviser

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Hiroshima and the end of Bomber Command

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Hermann Bondi: The adviser

Freeman Dyson Scientist

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42. Hermann Bondi: The adviser		1477	00:44
43. Hiroshima and the end of Bomber Command		1730	01:14
44. Sinecure at Imperial College		1471	01:34
45. Work in pure mathematics while at Imperial College		1610	03:58
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47. Coming to Cambridge as a fellow - Wittgenstein	1	2672	04:18
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Hermann Bondi, of course, is the example of somebody who did that. I mean, Hermann Bondi was a close friend of mine in England and he was very similar to me in many ways. And he's an astrophysicist by profession but he became a high level adviser in the government. I mean, he was in fact adviser, Chief Adviser to the Ministry of Defence in England, and then afterwards became, I think, adviser to the Prime Minister, and so he has been very effective as a military adviser in England, and he is certainly no more British than I am. I mean, if I'd stayed behind I could have been a Bondi, I think.

Freeman Dyson (1923-2020), who was born in England, moved to Cornell University after graduating from Cambridge University with a BA in Mathematics. He subsequently became a professor and worked on nuclear reactors, solid state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics and biology. He published several books and, among other honours, was awarded the Heineman Prize and the Royal Society's Hughes Medal.

Title: Hermann Bondi: The adviser

Listeners: Sam Schweber

Silvan Sam Schweber is the Koret Professor of the History of Ideas and Professor of Physics at Brandeis University, and a Faculty Associate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is the author of a history of the development of quantum electro mechanics, "QED and the men who made it", and has recently completed a biography of Hans Bethe and the history of nuclear weapons development, "In the Shadow of the Bomb: Oppenheimer, Bethe, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist" (Princeton University Press, 2000).

Tags: UK: MOD, Ministry of Defense, Hermann Bondi

Duration: 45 seconds

Date story recorded: June 1998

Date story went live: 24 January 2008