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feared a general, nationwide,
conspiracy to revolution.
In 1827 Huntingford contracted a
serious illness from which he never
recovered. It prevented him from
attending the House of Lords in
September 1831 to join Addington
in voting against the second Reform
bill – a vote that killed the bill and
The Trusty Servant
which unleashed riots in Derby and
Nottingham and the destruction
of the bishop’s palace in Bristol.
He died in College on 29 th April
1832, as the third Reform bill made
its way to the peers in Parliament.
With Huntingford died not merely a
constitutional arrangement, but what
the historian, Boyd Hilton, calls ‘the
intellectual ascendancy of a world
view, the cultural hegemony of the old
elites.’ Huntingford could not look
to the future with any confidence or
sanguine hope. The ‘Revolution’ in
Britain had ‘made such rapid strides’.
This is an extract from a longer essay
by Dr Guymer on Huntingford, which
can be obtained by emailing the editor at
[email protected].
Dreams of Earth and Sky:
Freeman Dyson (Coll, 36-41)
Freeman Dyson died on February 28 th
2020, aged 96. Ryan O’Keeffe (C, 96-
98), wrote this appreciation for the 2013
Wykeham Journal:
It does little justice to the remarkable
catalogue of achievements of
Freeman Dyson (Coll, 36-41) to
state simply that he is one of the
world’s pre-eminent physicists and
mathematicians, although any
scientist – and even many non-
scientists – will tell you he is.
In advance of an interview with
Professor Dyson, who resides
in Princeton, New Jersey, some
background research suggests a
colossal intellect awaits me on the
other end of the telephone. When
I get through, however, what is
most striking is the ease with which
our discussion proceeds. Professor
Dyson’s natural warmth comes
through in a way that immediately
dispels any suggestion of the
stereotypically unapproachable
scientist in an ivory tower of
intellectual superiority.
‘Winchester College has been a
part of my life for longer than I can
remember,’ he tells me. ‘I was eight
months old when we moved into 21
Kingsgate Street in 1924, when my
father was appointed Director of
Music at the College.’ His earliest
childhood memories therefore are
of running around Meads, climbing
trees and chasing dogs. ‘We were
hooligans!’ he says of himself and
his friends, the young children
of other members of Common
Room. Charting the course of his
progress from young hooligan to
Professor Emeritus at the Institute
for Advanced Study, the position
he holds today, is an exercise in the
appreciation of the fulfilment of
human potential. Professor Dyson
was awarded a Professorship at
Cornell University at the age of 28.
Had it not been for the war, and
two years consequently spent in
Operations Research at RAF Bomber
Command halfway through his
undergraduate degree at Cambridge,
he might well have achieved this
accolade even earlier. He has had over
a dozen books and papers published,
including his 1979 autobiography
Disturbing the Universe, in which he
discussed his ambitions to travel into
space, having set himself the timetable
of personally reaching Saturn by
1970. He has advised governments
on matters ranging from nuclear
8
warfare to climate change. He is one
of very few to have been received Ad
Portas at Winchester twice, and the
list of his awards and honours reads
comprehensively, with only a Nobel
Prize missing from the list. Although
many argue that the committee has
committed an oversight in never
having awarded him the Nobel Prize
for Physics, Professor Dyson counters
modestly that he prefers the infamy
of never having won it, while also
pointing out that ‘people asking why
you didn’t get the prize is much better
than them asking why you did.’ In
the midst of all this achievement,
the world of science recognises
Professor Dyson’s demonstration of
the equivalence of the formulations
of quantum electrodynamics as his
single most important contribution.
He explains to me in very clear
and simple language that quantum
electrodynamics is the study of how
atoms and light particles behave, the
most spectacular application of which
is the laser. ‘The physical ideas were
all correct, and the proofs had been
comprehensively gone over many
times,’ he explains. ‘However, the
mathematics was a bit of a mess, so
it was difficult to be 100% sure that it