Freeman Dyson - Persecution at prep school (7/157)

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American-British physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson, was born in England in 1923. Aged 25, he relocated to Cornell University and has become known for his achievements in the fields of solid state physics, nuclear engineering and quantum field theory. [Listener: Sam Schweber]

TRANSCRIPT: Then I went to what, in England, is called a prep school, which is a boarding school. Which was a very... this was the worst period of my life; from the ages eight till 12, I was at this school which was modelled on Dicken's Dotheboys Hall, which was a... really a brutal place.

[SS] Away from home.

That was away from home, and so I was boarding there and I was utterly miserable for most of the time, and being tortured more by the boys than by the teachers. I think the teachers on the whole liked me and the boys hated me because I was smarter than they were. So I was a member of a small group of intellectuals who were persecuted. So that's also part of my life and I learned at that point that most people are very stupid and brutal and one shouldn't expect too much.

[SS] And it's traumatic because you were wrenched from your home at this early age, I mean you're eight and...

Yes. I don't say it was all that traumatic because it was the normal thing and most of the boys at the school were in the same situation. We were... it was... it grew up during the 19th century I suppose, because so many of the British families were living in India and such places so they sent their kids home to be educated in boarding schools. So the boarding school was accepted as very much... the natural order of things for middle class families, and so though... it was ... it wasn't expected that one would enjoy it. I mean the whole point was, in fact, to toughen you up, and so the bullying and brutality was not actually regarded as particularly harmful, it was just building your character.

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