Since we're trading Dyson anecdotes, here's a similarly awkward one, about how Dyson met Wolfgang Pauli for the first time [0]: > I remember the very first tim

Since we're trading Dyson anecdotes, here's a similarly awkward one, about how Dyson met Wolfgang Pauli for the first time [0]: > I remember the very first time I met [Pauli] at a conference in Zurich. He was talking with a whole group of people about Julian Schwinger, who had just come to Switzerland. Schwinger was a brilliant young American who had done some very fine work. He was a rival of Feynman; they were the two geniuses then. Pauli was saying that Schwinger told us all this stuff that actually made sense, not like that nonsense Dyson has been writing. At that point I came walking up with a friend of mine, Markus Fierz, who was also a Swiss scientist. With a twinkle in his eye, Fierz came up to Pauli and said, “Please allow me to introduce you to my friend, Freeman Dyson.” Pauli said, “Oh that doesn’t matter. He doesn’t understand German.” Which of course I did. That was a good beginning and we were friends right from the very first day. [0] https://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/my-life-with-the-physics-dream-team https://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/my-life-with-the-physics-d...