https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/remembering-freeman-dyson/

Freeman Dyson was incapable of speaking a dull sentence. For more than 60 years, he was one of the world’s most accomplished living mathematical physicists, and in his later decades he earned a literary reputation as one of the few great scientists who wrote as clearly as he thought.

Before I first met him 16 years ago, I imagined that he would be a commanding figure with a voice to match. I was therefore surprised to shake hands with a physically small and slender man, formally dressed in a way that would have been fashionable in the 1950s. Although he had lived in the United States for more than five decades and been an American citizen since 1957, he spoke with a strong English accent, in a manner that was direct, unassuming and cautiously friendly. In his peremptory way, he told me: “I have only two talents—doing calculations and writing essays.”