Total Page : 539
Publisher : Faber Faber
Publication Date : 2009 02
>> A fascinating scientist and well told story
Paul Dirac was one of the original founding fathers of quantum theory In his fusing of quantum theory and the special theory of relativity while working with linear algebra the positron popped out as something that mathematically had to exist better known today as anti matter The author tells a story that is more than just a biography He gives us a history of the birth of quantum theory more interestingly he tells us about the people surrounding Dirac The author suspects that Dirac may have been autistic and given his letters other correspondences and relationships it seems a possibility The tale of how his wife had pursued Dirac put up with his strange ways and came to marry and live with him is heartwarming and an amusing story that caps off this wonderful novel about Dirac s life that is scientific and human Reading his precise numbered answers to his wife s letters leaves you to wonder what kind of woman it took to live with this brilliant man You end up admiring her as well as him
>> An ecellent book on a great man the life of Paul Dirac
This book comes highly rated and reviewed by leading newspapers and science magazines I agree It tells the life of one of the super great minds of all time not just of physics
He made many discoveries in the advancement of physics and quantum theorh He postulated the existence of antimatter long before any pysical evidence He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933
Paul Dirac spent his life in the company of other greats such as Einstein Schrodingerer etc He was a teacher as well spending the last years of his life at Florida State
I think if by reading a good biography you gain insight into another s life you also gain insight into your own life
>> The story of the father of quantum mechanics
I went to Cambridge in 1967 to 1970 and received my degree in Natural Sciences particularly Physics Prof Dirac gave his retirement lecture while I was there and I arrived 3 hours early in order to get a seat to discover that the hall was completely filled including people hanging on for dear life at the back walls and the overflow crowd already in the courtyard I gave up and went home I wish I had shown up a lot earlier but I was young and foolish This book does an excellent job of depicting the professional and personal life of one of the two great minds of the 20th century the other being Einstein As a physicist later to go on to do research in theoretical physics and publish some puny papers as most academic physicists do I regarded Dirac as high school basketball players regard Michael Jordan
Whether you are a scientist or not this book will prove interesting not least because of the notion introduced to me for the first time that Dirac may have had a high functioning form of autism Impossible to know of course as one cannot diagnose at a distance but very consistent A fascinating man who lived in the most interesting time for Physics since Newton and whose contemporaries established our modern thinking of the laws of nature and looked up to Dirac as their thought leader for so long
Excellent book highly recommended
