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He was the first to develop quantum field theory, which underlies all theoretical work on sub-atomic or "elementary" particles today, work that is fundamental to our understanding of the forces of nature.
Apr 24, 2024 · Satisfied with the interpretation that the fundamental laws governing microscopic particles are probabilistic, or that “nature makes a choice,” Dirac declared quantum mechanics complete and turned his main attention to relativistic quantum theory.
- Alexei Kojevnikov
Aug 5, 2023 · Dirac was one of the pioneers of quantum theory, the revolutionary description of the submicroscopic realm of atoms and their constituents.
- Marcus Chown
- Early Days
- The Dirac Equation
- Other Achievements
- Dirac Stories
When Dirac went to Cambridge in 1923, the physics of matter on the smallest scales – in those days this was the physics of the atom – was in ferment. It had been known for more than a decade that the old mechanics of Newton – “classical” mechanics, as it came to be called – does not apply in the microscopic world. In particular, evidence from the l...
Although brilliant – in Einstein’s words, “the most logically perfect presentation of quantum mechanics” – this was a reformulation of physics that had, admittedly only just, been discovered. Dirac’s main contribution came several years later, when (still in his mid-twenties) he made his most spectacular discovery. Before quantum mechanics, there h...
Having explained spin, it was natural for Dirac to try to explain electric charge, and in particular the mysterious fact that it is quantized: all charges found in nature are multiples of the charge on the electron. In classical electricity, there is no basis for this: charges can have any value. In 1931 Dirac gave a solution of this problem in an ...
It is not my intention to write about what sort of person Dirac was. But I must mention the genre of “Dirac stories”. He was so unusual in the logic and precision of his interaction with the world, both in and out of physics, that tales have become attached to him and have acquired a life of their own. I suppose it matters to a historian whether th...
Nov 8, 2020 · While the origins of quantum mechanics can be traced back to Heisenberg, it was Dirac who opened a gateway for new branches within quantum theory to be researched through his mathematical expression. His equation authenticated the study of theoretical physics and predicted the existence of antimatter, as proven by the discovery of the positron.
May 20, 2009 · A detailed biography argues that the Nobel prizewinner's notorious reticence delayed experimentalists from discovering the antimatter that would confirm his elegant theory, explains...
Feb 13, 2024 · Dirac’s influence extends to quantum electrodynamics (QED), a theory that describes how light and matter interact. His ideas contributed to the early development of QED, and the term “quantum electrodynamics” itself was coined by him.
