Paul Dirac
- Filed under: Gadgets
- Date: Jun 30,2008
Paul Dirac was a British theoretical physicist. Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and spent the last ten years of his life at Florida State University. Among other discoveries, he formulated the so-called Dirac equation, which describes the behavior of fermions and which led to the prediction of the existence of antimatter. Dirac shared the Nobel Prize in physics for 1933 with Erwin Schrödinger, “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.”
Paul Dirac was born in Bristol, England and grew up in the Bishopston area of the city. His father, Charles Dirac, was an immigrant from Saint-Maurice in the Canton of Valais, Switzerland.
In 1984 Dirac died in Tallahassee, Florida where he is buried. The Dirac-Hellmann Award at FSU was endowed by Dr Bruce P. Hellmann (Dirac’s last doctoral student) in 1997 to reward outstanding work in theoretical physics by FSU researchers.
The importance of Dirac’s work lies essentially in his famous wave equation, which introduced special relativity into Schrödinger’s equation. Taking into account the fact that, mathematically speaking, relativity theory and quantum theory are not only distinct from each other, but also oppose each other, Dirac’s work could be considered a fruitful reconciliation between the two theories.
Dirac’s publications include the books Quantum Theory of the Electron (1928) and The Principles of Quantum Mechanics (1930; 3rd ed. 1947).
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1930, being awarded the Society’s Royal Medal and the Copley Medal. He was elected a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1961.
First, and above all for Dirac, the logic that led to the theory was, although deeply sophisticated, in a sense beautifully simple. Much later, when someone asked him (as many must have done before) “How did you find the Dirac equation?” he is said to have replied: “I found it beautiful.” Second, it agreed with precise measurements of the energies of light emitted from atoms, in particularly where these differed from ordinary (non-relativistic) quantum mechanics.
Many physicists have spoken of Dirac with awe. John Wheeler, referring to the sharp light of his intelligence, said “Dirac casts no penumbra.” Niels Bohr said: “Of all physicists, Dirac has the purest soul.” He is also reported as saying (I cannot now find this quotation): “Dirac did not have a trivial bone in his body.”
The mathematician Mark Kac divided geniuses into two classes. There are the ordinary geniuses, whose achievements one imagines other people might emulate, with enormous hard work and a bit of luck. Then there are the magicians, whose inventions are so astounding, so counter to all the intuitions of their colleagues, that it is hard to see how any human could have imagined them. Dirac was a magician.
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