"Dirac" redirects here. For other uses, see Dirac (disambiguation).
Paul Dirac
OM FRS
Dirac in 1933
Born
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
(1902-08-08)8 August 1902
Bristol, England
Died
20 October 1984(1984-10-20) (aged 82)
Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.
Nationality
British
Education
University of Bristol
University of Cambridge
Known for
One of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics
See list
Spouse
Margit Wigner
(m. 1937)
Children
2
Awards
Nobel Prize in Physics (1933)
Royal Medal (1939)
Copley Medal (1952)
Max Planck Medal (1952)
Fellow of the Royal Society (1930)
Scientific career
Fields
Theoretical physics, mathematical physics
Institutions
University of Cambridge
University of Miami
Florida State University
Thesis
Quantum Mechanics(1926)
Doctoral advisor
Ralph Fowler
Doctoral students
Homi J. Bhabha[1]
Harish-Chandra[2]
Dennis Sciama
Fred Hoyle[3]
Behram Kurşunoğlu[4]
John Polkinghorne[5] C. J. Eliezer
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Paul Adrien Maurice DiracOM FRS[6] (/dɪˈræk/; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English mathematical and theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics.[7][8] He is credited with laying the foundations of quantum field theory.[9][10][11][12] He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a professor of physics at Florida State University and the University of Miami, and a 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.
Dirac graduated from the Universty of Bristol with a first class honours Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1921, and graduated from the University of Cambridge with a PhD in physics in 1926, writing the first ever thesis on quantum mechanics.[8][13]
Dirac made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, coining the latter term.[11] Among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation in 1928, which describes the behaviour of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter,[14] and is considered one of the most important equations in physics,[9] with it being considered by some to be the "real seed of modern physics".[15] He wrote a famous paper in 1931,[16] which further predicted the existence of antimatter.[17][18][14] Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory".[19] He was the youngest ever theoretician to win the prize until T. D. Lee in 1957.[20] He also made significant contributions to the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics. His 1930 monograph, ThePrinciples of Quantum Mechanics, is considered to be one of the most influential texts on quantum mechanics.[21]
Dirac's contributions were not only restricted to quantum mechanics. He contributed to the Tube Alloys project, the British programme to research and construct atomic bombs during World War II.[22][23] Furthermore, Dirac made fundamental contributions to the process of uranium enrichment and the gas centrifuge,[24][25][26][23] and whose work was deemed to be "probably the most important theoretical result in centrifuge technology".[27] He also contributed to cosmology, putting forth his large numbers hypothesis.[24][28][29][30][31] Dirac is also seen as having anticipated string theory well before its inception, with his work on the Dirac membrane and Dirac–Born–Infeld action, amongst other contributions.[32][33]
Dirac was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character. In a 1926 letter to Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein wrote of a Dirac paper, "I am toiling over Dirac. This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful." In another letter concerning the Compton effect he wrote, "I don't understand the details of Dirac at all."[34] In 1987, Abdus Salam stated that "Dirac was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of this or any century . . . No man except Einstein has had such a decisive influence, in so short a time, on the course of physics in this century."[35] In 1995, Stephen Hawking stated that "Dirac has done more than anyone this century, with the exception of Einstein, to advance physics and change our picture of the universe".[36] Antonino Zichichi asserted that Dirac had a greater impact on modern physics than Einstein.[15] Dirac's achievements are considered to be on par with Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Einstein.[37][38][39]
^Bhabha, Homi Jehangir (1935). On cosmic radiation and the creation and annihilation of positrons and electrons (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.727546.
^Harish-Chandra, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews.
^Cite error: The named reference mathgene was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^DeWitt, C. M., & Rickles, D., eds., The Role of Gravitation in Physics: Report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference (Berlin: Edition Open Access, 2011), p. 30.
^Polkinghorne, John Charlton (1955). Contributions to quantum field theory (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.727138.
^Dalitz, R. H.; Peierls, R. (1986). "Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac. 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 32: 137–185. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1986.0006. JSTOR 770111.
^Simmons, John (1997). The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present. Secaucus, New Jersey: Carol Publishing Group. pp. 104–108. ISBN 978-0806517490.
^ abMukunda, N., Images of Twentieth Century Physics (Bangalore: Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, 2000), p. 9.
^ abBerry, Michael (1 February 1998). "Paul Dirac: the purest soul in physics". Physics World. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
^Duck, Ian; Sudarshan, E.C.G. (1998). "Chapter 6: Dirac's Invention of Quantum Field Theory". Pauli and the Spin-Statistics Theorem. World Scientific Publishing. pp. 149–167. ISBN 978-9810231149.
^ ab"Quantum Field Theory > The History of QFT (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
^Bhaumik, Mani L. (2022). "How Dirac's Seminal Contributions Pave the Way for Comprehending Nature's Deeper Designs". Quanta. 8 (1): 88–100. arXiv:2209.03937. doi:10.12743/quanta.v8i1.96. S2CID 212835814.
^"Paul Dirac - Magnet Academy". nationalmaglab.org. Retrieved 7 May 2024.
^ ab"Discovering the positron". timeline.web.cern.ch. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
^ abZichichi, Antonino (2 March 2000). "Dirac, Einstein and physics". Physics World. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
^Dirac, Paul (1931). "Quantised singularities in the electromagnetic field". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character. 133 (821): 60–72. Bibcode:1931RSPSA.133...60D. doi:10.1098/rspa.1931.0130. ISSN 0950-1207.
^Gottfried, Kurt (2011). "P. A. M. Dirac and the discovery of quantum mechanics". American Journal of Physics. 79 (3): 2, 10. arXiv:1006.4610. Bibcode:2011AmJPh..79..261G. doi:10.1119/1.3536639. S2CID 18229595.
^Kragh, Helge (10 September 2013), "Paul Dirac and The Principles of Quantum Mechanics", Research and Pedagogy: A History of Quantum Physics through Its Textbooks, MPRL – Studies, Berlin: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, ISBN 978-3-945561-24-9, retrieved 23 October 2023
^"The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
^Farmelo, Graham (2008). "Paul Dirac: The Mozart of Science". www.ias.edu. Retrieved 8 May 2024.
^Brown, Laurie M. (2006). "Paul A. M. Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics" (PDF). Physics in Perspective. 8 (4): 381–407. Bibcode:2006PhP.....8..381B. doi:10.1007/s00016-006-0276-4. S2CID 120303937.
^Cathcart, Brian (25 May 2006). "Tube Alloys directorate (act. 1941–1945)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93791. Retrieved 25 October 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ abVrobel, Daniel P. (2020). Paul Dirac: The Atomic Centrifuge and the Tube Alloys Project (Master thesis). Florida State University.
^ abMcKie, Robin (31 January 2009). "Anti-matter and madness". amp.theguardian.com. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
^Kemp, R. Scott (26 June 2009). "Gas Centrifuge Theory and Development: A Review of U.S. Programs". Science & Global Security. 17 (1): 1–19. Bibcode:2009S&GS...17....1K. doi:10.1080/08929880802335816. ISSN 0892-9882.
^Gilinsky, Victor (2010). "Remembrances of Dirac". Physics Today. 63 (5): 59. Bibcode:2010PhT....63e..59G. doi:10.1063/1.3431338.
^Kragh 1990, p. 158
^Dirac, Paul Adrien Maurice (5 April 1938). "A new basis for cosmology". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Mathematical and Physical Sciences. 165 (921): 199–208. Bibcode:1938RSPSA.165..199D. doi:10.1098/rspa.1938.0053. ISSN 0080-4630. S2CID 121069801.
^Kragh, Helge (2014). "Paul Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers". Masters of the Universe: Conversations with Cosmologists of the Past: 217–237. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722892.003.0012. ISBN 978-0-19-872289-2 – via Oxford Academic.
^Saibal, Ray; Mukhopadhyay, Utpal; Ray, Soham; Bhattacharjee, Arjak (2019). "Dirac's large number hypothesis: A journey from concept to implication". International Journal of Modern Physics D. 28 (8): 1930014–1930096. Bibcode:2019IJMPD..2830014R. doi:10.1142/S0218271819300143. S2CID 127899548 – via World Scientific.
^Dubois, Eve-Aline; Füzfa, André; Lambert, Dominique (2022). "The large numbers hypothesis in cosmology". The Fifteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting. WORLD SCIENTIFIC: 1741–1744. Bibcode:2022mgm..conf.1741D. doi:10.1142/9789811258251_0259. ISBN 978-981-12-5824-4. S2CID 225097737.
^Cite error: The named reference :6 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Kragh 1990, p. 82] "Dirac verstehe ich im Einzelnen überhaupt nicht (Compton-Effekt)"
^Kursunoglu, Behram N.; Wigner, Eugene P. (1987). Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Reminiscences about a Great Physicist. Cambridge University Press. p. 262. ISBN 9780521340137.
^"The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius". CERN Courier. 25 August 2009. Retrieved 22 October 2023.
^Hey, Tony; Walters, Patrick (1987). The Quantum Universe. Cambridge University Press. p. 124. ISBN 978-0521267441.
^Close, Frank (20 May 2009). "Paul Dirac: a physicist of few words". Nature. 459 (7245): 326–327. Bibcode:2009Natur.459..326C. doi:10.1038/459326a. ISSN 1476-4687.
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac OM FRS (/dɪˈræk/; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English mathematical and theoretical physicist who is considered to...
theory of distributions. The delta function was introduced by physicist PaulDirac, and has since been applied routinely in physics and engineering to model...
In particle physics, the Dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by British physicist PaulDirac in 1928. In its free form, or including...
The Dirac Medal or Dirac prize can refer to different awards named in honour of the physics Nobel Laureate PaulDirac. Dirac Medal (ICTP), awarded by the...
magnetic charge started with a paper by the physicist PaulDirac in 1931. In this paper, Dirac showed that if any magnetic monopoles exist in the universe...
In quantum field theory, the Dirac spinor is the spinor that describes all known fundamental particles that are fermions, with the possible exception...
mid-1920s by Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, PaulDirac and others. The modern theory is formulated in various specially developed...
The Dirac large numbers hypothesis (LNH) is an observation made by PaulDirac in 1937 relating ratios of size scales in the Universe to that of force...
of Dirac cone comes from the Dirac equation that can describe relativistic particles in quantum mechanics, proposed by PaulDirac. Isotropic Dirac cones...
'Tursa' supercomputer) DiRAC is a backronym which honours the theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate PaulDirac. "Mark Wilkinson". DiRAC. Retrieved 13 October...
second-order operator such as a Laplacian. The original case which concerned PaulDirac was to factorise formally an operator for Minkowski space, to get a form...
"Paul Ehrenfest (1880–1933)". KNAW Past Members. Retrieved 27 February 2020. Farmelo, Graham (2009). The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of PaulDirac,...
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of PaulDirac, Quantum Genius is a 2009 biography of quantum physicist PaulDirac written by British physicist and author...
In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics. Fermions have a half-odd-integer spin (spin 1/2, spin 3/2, etc.) and...
neutrinos) and hence are Dirac fermions. They are named after PaulDirac, and can be modeled with the Dirac equation. A Dirac fermion is equivalent to...
antineutron are distinct. In 1932, soon after the prediction of positrons by PaulDirac, Carl D. Anderson found that cosmic-ray collisions produced these particles...
physics, a Dirac string is a one-dimensional curve in space, conceived of by the physicist PaulDirac, stretching between two hypothetical Dirac monopoles...
gravity. The modern theory of antimatter began in 1928, with a paper by PaulDirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation...