It is rather ironic that, in an editorial honouring the physicist Freeman Dyson, you should refer to another scientist, Gregor Mendel, as having “left science for God”, as if science and religion were incompatible (Thinkers make progress by getting things wrong as well as getting them right, Journal, 9 March).
Your obituary of Dyson (4 March) said “the young Dyson was already convinced of some moral purpose to the universe and remained a non-denominational Christian all his life”. It also said that he had little patience with physicists who argued that the world was the consequence of blind chance, quoting his words: “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe must in some sense have known we were coming”.
Brendan O’Brien
London
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