A story is told about the famous astrophysicist, Freeman Dyson, when he met a marine biologist during a trip along the coast of British Columbia a number of years ago. As the two men were discussing their work, Dyson's fourteen-year-old daughter, Emily, was listening to everything.
The biologist asked what kind of problems Dyson was currently engaged with, and the astrophysicist replied, "I'm interested right now in galaxies. There's a big problem with how disk-shaped galaxies stay together. They appear to be gravitationally unstable. It's a clean mathematical question—what holds them together?"
Very quietly, Emily voiced her opinion: "Epoxy." Kenneth Brower, The Starship & The Canoe (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), p. 253 .
