When I was at Rutgers, Dyson once came to give a talk. Most of the time when someone very famous comes and gives a talk, they try and give a talk in the general

When I was at Rutgers, Dyson once came to give a talk. Most of the time when someone very famous comes and gives a talk, they try and give a talk in the general style of TED talks - light on content, big on catchy insightful seeming phrases. The entire department showed up to the mathematical physics seminar that week. Everyone besides the math physicists was very disappointed when Dyson gave a talk about some semiconductor crystals he really liked, together with their energy band diagrams. No "meaning of life", no discussion of free will, just a clever math trick for understanding a particular kind of crystal. It was one of the very few famous guy talks I really enjoyed (the other was Stephen Wolfram).