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Therefore, Dirac was known for his "astounding physical intuition combined with the ability to invent new mathematics to create new physics". During his career, Dirac made numerous important contributions to mathematical subjects, including the Dirac delta function, Dirac algebra and the Dirac operator. Quantum theory
Feb 13, 2024 · Paul Dirac was a pivotal figure in the development of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, his work had a lasting influence on the scientific community. Dirac was renowned for his dedication to mathematical beauty and simplicity in physical laws. Early Life and Education
Biography. Paul Dirac's father was Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac and his mother was Florence Hannah Holten. Charles Dirac was a Swiss citizen born in Monthey, in the Valais Canton of Switzerland, while his mother came from Cornwall in England. Charles had been educated at the University of Geneva, then came to England in around 1888 and taught ...
- 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...
Aug 5, 2023 · British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac was one of the most significant figures in the early days of quantum physics, who along with Erwin Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933 ...
- Marcus Chown
Apr 24, 2024 · electron spin. positron. quantum. P.A.M. Dirac (born August 8, 1902, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England—died October 20, 1984, Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.) was an English theoretical physicist who was one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Dirac is most famous for his 1928 relativistic quantum theory of the ...
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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 Frank Close ...
