Пришел по почте заказанный сборник работ Дайсона. Самое главное в ней, конечно же, не сами статьи (которые сейчас можно извлечь из просторов интернета, не вставая из-за стола), а предисловие-комментарий. Вот, например, о французском учебнике по матанализу, найденному им в школьные годы в библиотеке своей школы [пояснения в скобках мои]:

At Winchester [school attended by Dyson] we often wondered how it happened that the "Cours d'Analyse" [by Camille Jordan] was in our library. None of our teachers was interested in it or seemed to be aware of its existence. It was hard to imagine that any school librarian would have considered it fit fare for English school-boys. Miraculously, it was there. The probable explanation of the miracle only emerged many years later, after I have read Hardy's "Apology" ["A Mathematician's Apology", where Hardy praises Jordan's book] and after I found out that he had himself been a boy at the same school. He hated the school, and when I later got to know him in Cambridge he never spoke of the fact that he had been there. If Hardy had put the "Cours d'Analyse" into the school library, it would have been consistent with his character to make the gift anonymously, without any record that he was the donor. He may have hoped that some day, in the fullness of time, some school-boy would find it and be inspired by it as he himself been. How else could its presence there be explained? He died before I had a chance to ask him whether my surmise was true. I shall always regret that I failed to thank him for his earliest contribution to my education.