My favorite thing about Dyson was that, in the middle of doing atomic research, he plotted a graph of the total number of nuclear tests done every year, and saw

My favorite thing about Dyson was that, in the middle of doing atomic research, he plotted a graph of the total number of nuclear tests done every year, and saw that it was increasing exponentially - which caused him to reverse his position on the use of nuclear devices, and argue to cancel his own project and all similar projects. from Dyson's 1962 memo on the Test Ban Treaty: "The choice, whether or not to accept a test-ban agreement, is thus not a choice between two static situations, one without testing and the other with testing at some constant rate. This choice seems rather to be, either to stop tests, or to continue to double the rate of testing every three years ad infinitum."