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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
'A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.' Michael Frayn
The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather.
Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.
The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history.
'A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph
The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather.
Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.
The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history.
'A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph
560 pages, Hardcover
First published August 4, 2009
About the author
Graham Farmelo
10 books77 followersGraham Farmelo is a senior research fellow at the Science Museum, London and associate professor of physics at Northeastern University, US.
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March 29, 2019
The Joys of Eccentricity
Scientific method, like human nature, is a term of approval or disapproval not a description of anything real. We use such terms as if we knew what they mean; but they are largely without any definite content. Their primary function is one of propaganda, sometimes professional, often religious, always tendentious. Taking such terms seriously - except to dismiss them - is usually bad for human beings and other living things.
This aptly-titled biography of the prominent 20th century British scientist, Paul Dirac, is an illustration of the point. Dirac was a bona fide eccentric, a nerd, a geek, probably autistic, someone who just didn’t fit wherever he found himself. He was also a genius who was the first to formulate the relativistic mathematics of quantum mechanics. How he did this was hardly methodical and can only be called scientific in retrospect.
Dirac was initially trained in what today would be termed a trade school in Bristol. There he learned, among other things, engineering drawing, and that he was hopeless with any task involving manual dexterity. He was, in a sense, the antithesis of the mythical British empiricist. He went on haphazardly to advance his studies in applied mathematics and fitfully to pursue an interest in the then nascent field of relativity physics at Cambridge.
Only by accident did he notice that the results being produced in another area of contemporary physics, quantum mechanics, by the rather more famous scientist, Werner Heisenberg, had a formal mathematical structure similar to that one of his teachers had been interested in several years before.* This lead Dirac to formulate a suggestion for the behaviour of sub-atomic particles in roughly this form:
This suggestion was rejected by most quantum physicists at the time as being patently unscientific, a mathematician’s fancy. Part of the reason for the disdain shown toward the idea is that the terms on the left side of his equation - the symbols for position and momentum - are entirely abstract. That is to say, they are dimensionless entities, like a mathematical point, that have no real existence outside of the mathematician’s head. By definition, they can’t be measured (or what amounts to the same thing, they could be measured in any of an infinite number of ways); so they can’t be real things. The formula, therefore, must be meaningless.
Helass for the sceptics, the eccentric formula turned out to be exactly the key required to unlock the mysteries of quantum behaviour (and in the way of science, to produce quite a few more - like the possibility of anti-matter). Either what Dirac had done was surreptitiously ‘good science’ behind its hapless façade; or what constituted good science was in need of redefinition. Subsequent results pointed clearly to the latter. Whatever Dirac had done defined proper scientific method, although no one would have admitted it beforehand.
But even Dirac didn’t know how he had arrived at his idea and therefore what his method might have been. Coincidence and history simply appeared to combine to produce a thought, which prompted him to find a certain mid-nineteenth century tome in the University Library. Hardly, therefore, a series of events to be written up in the annals of the philosophy of science. Nothing about the process could be called scientific except that it was conducted by a person who was (barely) considered a scientist.
It would seem that in surveying the history of science the vast majority of ‘breakthroughs’ both big and small occur in just this way. Whatever ‘method’ produces them only becomes visible after they are produced; and then such method typically appears to be un-replicable as a procedure or clearly inappropriate for universal application. This is, on the face of it, a highly unscientific state of affairs. If we can’t specify the process by which reliable knowledge is generated, how can we distinguish between authentic science and bogus fakery, between reason and revelation, between astronomy and astrology?
The answer is that we can’t. Not by specifying an acceptable or mandatory procedure in any case. The only way to verify the results of scientific, or any other sort of, thought is to promote widespread and unrestricted argument about it. Through such argument it might be established that there are procedural flaws in one’s thought or experiments. Equally it might be established that the existing ‘rules’ for thinking or experimenting are inadequate.
But it’s not even possible to state the criteria in advance by which the choice should be made among these alternatives. The criteria are only discovered in the argument, and then continuously re-discovered through subsequent argument. Reason itself emerges from the debate; it cannot be imposed upon the debate.
If scientific method means anything at all, it means keeping this argument going with as many participants as possible. The only way to judge the quality of that argument is how completely it ‘sweeps in’ extremes of opinion. This, I think, is the abiding political as well as personal import of Dirac’s very eccentric, and unmethodical, professional life.
*This,is the mathematics of quaternions in which multiplication of elements is non-commutative; that is, where A x B ≠ (is not equal to) B x A.
**Where h is Planck’s constant and π is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of every circle (its value is about 3.142). This ‘matures’ by 1928 to something highly technical and irrelevant to the commentary here.
Scientific method, like human nature, is a term of approval or disapproval not a description of anything real. We use such terms as if we knew what they mean; but they are largely without any definite content. Their primary function is one of propaganda, sometimes professional, often religious, always tendentious. Taking such terms seriously - except to dismiss them - is usually bad for human beings and other living things.
This aptly-titled biography of the prominent 20th century British scientist, Paul Dirac, is an illustration of the point. Dirac was a bona fide eccentric, a nerd, a geek, probably autistic, someone who just didn’t fit wherever he found himself. He was also a genius who was the first to formulate the relativistic mathematics of quantum mechanics. How he did this was hardly methodical and can only be called scientific in retrospect.
Dirac was initially trained in what today would be termed a trade school in Bristol. There he learned, among other things, engineering drawing, and that he was hopeless with any task involving manual dexterity. He was, in a sense, the antithesis of the mythical British empiricist. He went on haphazardly to advance his studies in applied mathematics and fitfully to pursue an interest in the then nascent field of relativity physics at Cambridge.
Only by accident did he notice that the results being produced in another area of contemporary physics, quantum mechanics, by the rather more famous scientist, Werner Heisenberg, had a formal mathematical structure similar to that one of his teachers had been interested in several years before.* This lead Dirac to formulate a suggestion for the behaviour of sub-atomic particles in roughly this form:
position symbol × momentum symbol – momentum symbol × position symbol = h ×(square root of –1)/(2×π).**
This suggestion was rejected by most quantum physicists at the time as being patently unscientific, a mathematician’s fancy. Part of the reason for the disdain shown toward the idea is that the terms on the left side of his equation - the symbols for position and momentum - are entirely abstract. That is to say, they are dimensionless entities, like a mathematical point, that have no real existence outside of the mathematician’s head. By definition, they can’t be measured (or what amounts to the same thing, they could be measured in any of an infinite number of ways); so they can’t be real things. The formula, therefore, must be meaningless.
Helass for the sceptics, the eccentric formula turned out to be exactly the key required to unlock the mysteries of quantum behaviour (and in the way of science, to produce quite a few more - like the possibility of anti-matter). Either what Dirac had done was surreptitiously ‘good science’ behind its hapless façade; or what constituted good science was in need of redefinition. Subsequent results pointed clearly to the latter. Whatever Dirac had done defined proper scientific method, although no one would have admitted it beforehand.
But even Dirac didn’t know how he had arrived at his idea and therefore what his method might have been. Coincidence and history simply appeared to combine to produce a thought, which prompted him to find a certain mid-nineteenth century tome in the University Library. Hardly, therefore, a series of events to be written up in the annals of the philosophy of science. Nothing about the process could be called scientific except that it was conducted by a person who was (barely) considered a scientist.
It would seem that in surveying the history of science the vast majority of ‘breakthroughs’ both big and small occur in just this way. Whatever ‘method’ produces them only becomes visible after they are produced; and then such method typically appears to be un-replicable as a procedure or clearly inappropriate for universal application. This is, on the face of it, a highly unscientific state of affairs. If we can’t specify the process by which reliable knowledge is generated, how can we distinguish between authentic science and bogus fakery, between reason and revelation, between astronomy and astrology?
The answer is that we can’t. Not by specifying an acceptable or mandatory procedure in any case. The only way to verify the results of scientific, or any other sort of, thought is to promote widespread and unrestricted argument about it. Through such argument it might be established that there are procedural flaws in one’s thought or experiments. Equally it might be established that the existing ‘rules’ for thinking or experimenting are inadequate.
But it’s not even possible to state the criteria in advance by which the choice should be made among these alternatives. The criteria are only discovered in the argument, and then continuously re-discovered through subsequent argument. Reason itself emerges from the debate; it cannot be imposed upon the debate.
If scientific method means anything at all, it means keeping this argument going with as many participants as possible. The only way to judge the quality of that argument is how completely it ‘sweeps in’ extremes of opinion. This, I think, is the abiding political as well as personal import of Dirac’s very eccentric, and unmethodical, professional life.
*This,is the mathematics of quaternions in which multiplication of elements is non-commutative; that is, where A x B ≠ (is not equal to) B x A.
**Where h is Planck’s constant and π is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of every circle (its value is about 3.142). This ‘matures’ by 1928 to something highly technical and irrelevant to the commentary here.
August 26, 2019
Dirac was one of the most extraordinary thinkers of the 20th century - indeed, of all time - and this book makes a valiant attempt to tell you about his life. The problem is that the interesting things happened inside Dirac's head, and no one knows what was going on there. Dirac didn't like to talk unless he had something to say that he thought would be worth listening to, which was the case most of the time. When he'd come up with an idea that passed his test, he'd usually just write it down from start to finish, no corrections, no crossings out. As one of his colleagues said, it was as though a chunk of marble had fallen from Olympus. During a period of about ten years in the 20s and early 30s, he was phenomenally productive and played a major role in establishing the new field of quantum mechanics.
His greatest triumph was hypothesizing the existence of antimatter, now a word everyone knows. He didn't look at any experimental data: he just messed around with the equations for the electron and found a way to manipulate them into a form which seemed to show that there was another thing that was like an electron, but in some sense opposite in nature. People, including Dirac, were uncertain about what that actually meant, but the derivation was so elegant that he was sure it meant something. Less than five years later, experimentalists studying cosmic rays found tracks which could only be explained as being caused by a particle that behaved like a positively charged electron. When electrons and "positrons" met, they mutually annihilated. It turned out that antimatter existed; Dirac was awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 31.
Dirac himself didn't really know how he'd done it. He started talking about the importance of beauty and mathematical elegance in physical theories. The Dirac equation is indeed very beautiful and elegant, everyone agreed on that. But there was another, pragmatic side to Dirac, coming from his early training as an engineer. Sometimes the engineer seemed to take over, and he'd do apparently unsound things that would annoy the mathematical purists. The most famous example was the Dirac delta-function, which didn't become mathematically respectable for decades; Dirac just knew it was the right way, and cited analogies in engineering when he had to defend it. Later in life, he moved entirely towards elegant, mathematical modes of thinking, criticising the new mainstream of quantum field theory as being ugly and unsound, and after a while the miraculous discoveries stopped. Perhaps he needed to keep on thinking pragmatically from time to time; or perhaps he'd just got too old, or marriage somehow made him lose his focus.
Dirac was clearly autistic, and like many autistic people he was often unaware of social conventions. There are a thousand amusing stories about him. (George Gamow said that amusing stories about famous scientists are generally not true, except in the case of Dirac, when they are always true). But the stories aren't the important thing, it's his way of thinking. As with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Bobby Fischer, so many people have tried to figure out how to imitate the tantalisingly pure, simple style, but there's only ever going to be one of them.
His greatest triumph was hypothesizing the existence of antimatter, now a word everyone knows. He didn't look at any experimental data: he just messed around with the equations for the electron and found a way to manipulate them into a form which seemed to show that there was another thing that was like an electron, but in some sense opposite in nature. People, including Dirac, were uncertain about what that actually meant, but the derivation was so elegant that he was sure it meant something. Less than five years later, experimentalists studying cosmic rays found tracks which could only be explained as being caused by a particle that behaved like a positively charged electron. When electrons and "positrons" met, they mutually annihilated. It turned out that antimatter existed; Dirac was awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 31.
Dirac himself didn't really know how he'd done it. He started talking about the importance of beauty and mathematical elegance in physical theories. The Dirac equation is indeed very beautiful and elegant, everyone agreed on that. But there was another, pragmatic side to Dirac, coming from his early training as an engineer. Sometimes the engineer seemed to take over, and he'd do apparently unsound things that would annoy the mathematical purists. The most famous example was the Dirac delta-function, which didn't become mathematically respectable for decades; Dirac just knew it was the right way, and cited analogies in engineering when he had to defend it. Later in life, he moved entirely towards elegant, mathematical modes of thinking, criticising the new mainstream of quantum field theory as being ugly and unsound, and after a while the miraculous discoveries stopped. Perhaps he needed to keep on thinking pragmatically from time to time; or perhaps he'd just got too old, or marriage somehow made him lose his focus.
Dirac was clearly autistic, and like many autistic people he was often unaware of social conventions. There are a thousand amusing stories about him. (George Gamow said that amusing stories about famous scientists are generally not true, except in the case of Dirac, when they are always true). But the stories aren't the important thing, it's his way of thinking. As with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Bobby Fischer, so many people have tried to figure out how to imitate the tantalisingly pure, simple style, but there's only ever going to be one of them.
August 6, 2016
What a fantastic book I have just finished!
I always find biographies very interesting and stimulating, specially those regarding the lives of scientists. In this case, it was a biography not only of the life of the brilliant mind of Paul Dirac but also a complete story of the rise and golden age of quantum mechanics along with Heisenberg, Jordan, Pauli, Schrodinger and Born.
Dirac, the youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel for his legacy to this field was an eccentric man, famous for not understanding the feelings of others and lack of touch, always direct and honest, a loner, fully dedicated and obsessed on his work. He was a quiet man, who as a child preferred not to speak due a highly disciplined father who would only speak to him in French. Among all these peculiar characteristics of Dirac and many others of a personality that fits with those of a person with Asperger's syndrome, there is one that I truly admire in a person and this was the loyalty that Paul Dirac always demonstrated towards his family and his friends.
It is worth mentioning that the only time they saw him crying was when he knew of Albert Einstein's death, not because he had lost a friend but because science had lost a invaluable scientist. I have to say that it was also a delight reading about his comments regarding politics and religion, his love for Disney classic movies and for Odyssey 2001... an extra star for that last one!
Regarding what made him such a great scientists I'll just paraphrase the following: "One reason why Dirac's approach was so puzzling was that he was an unusual hybrid-- part theoretical physicist, part pure mathematician, part engineer. He had the physicist's passion to know the underlying laws of nature, the mathematician's love of abstraction for its own sake and the engineer's insistence that theories give useful results". Like Einstein, he was in the search of simpler and aesthetic laws that could explain all the principles of the universe in a unified way.
Besides learning about his legacy in quantum mechanics and electrodynamics and the contributions of so many amazing scientists of this golden era, what really kept my motivation throughout this biography so vividly was reading about the personality of this genius. His life, from a precociously clever but emotionally withdrawn child, all his way up to becoming one of the greatest scientist ever in the field of physics.
In summary, he was like Bohr once said about him: "Dirac was the strangest man".
A superb work!
Highly recommended for any person who finds excitement in biographies of scientists.
I always find biographies very interesting and stimulating, specially those regarding the lives of scientists. In this case, it was a biography not only of the life of the brilliant mind of Paul Dirac but also a complete story of the rise and golden age of quantum mechanics along with Heisenberg, Jordan, Pauli, Schrodinger and Born.
Dirac, the youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel for his legacy to this field was an eccentric man, famous for not understanding the feelings of others and lack of touch, always direct and honest, a loner, fully dedicated and obsessed on his work. He was a quiet man, who as a child preferred not to speak due a highly disciplined father who would only speak to him in French. Among all these peculiar characteristics of Dirac and many others of a personality that fits with those of a person with Asperger's syndrome, there is one that I truly admire in a person and this was the loyalty that Paul Dirac always demonstrated towards his family and his friends.
It is worth mentioning that the only time they saw him crying was when he knew of Albert Einstein's death, not because he had lost a friend but because science had lost a invaluable scientist. I have to say that it was also a delight reading about his comments regarding politics and religion, his love for Disney classic movies and for Odyssey 2001... an extra star for that last one!
Regarding what made him such a great scientists I'll just paraphrase the following: "One reason why Dirac's approach was so puzzling was that he was an unusual hybrid-- part theoretical physicist, part pure mathematician, part engineer. He had the physicist's passion to know the underlying laws of nature, the mathematician's love of abstraction for its own sake and the engineer's insistence that theories give useful results". Like Einstein, he was in the search of simpler and aesthetic laws that could explain all the principles of the universe in a unified way.
Besides learning about his legacy in quantum mechanics and electrodynamics and the contributions of so many amazing scientists of this golden era, what really kept my motivation throughout this biography so vividly was reading about the personality of this genius. His life, from a precociously clever but emotionally withdrawn child, all his way up to becoming one of the greatest scientist ever in the field of physics.
In summary, he was like Bohr once said about him: "Dirac was the strangest man".
A superb work!
Highly recommended for any person who finds excitement in biographies of scientists.
June 7, 2017
There are many stories in The Strangest Man. There is the story of scientific discovery and of the early quantum physics community that includes well-known names such as Einstein, Bohr, Rutherford, Oppenheimer, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born and more. There is the story of an era and how science and politics interact through war, depression and deep ideological differences. Finally there is the story of a man, his scientific achievements, his distant personality, his upbringing in a dysfunctional family and his transition that allows him to establish a family of his own.
Born to an English mother and French Swiss father in 1902 in Bristol, England, Paul Dirac would turn into one of the 20th century’s great scientists. His rigid taciturn personality caused Niels Bohr to describe him as “the strangest man.” Possibly autistic, from his early childhood throughout his life he kept to himself and talked as little as possible. His very strict father singled out the young Paul from his siblings for one-on-one suppers where they were allowed to speak only French. Paul Dirac deeply resented his father and blamed these excruciating evenings for his extreme reticence. As an adult he vowed never to speak French.
At the University of Bristol Dirac studied engineering then switched to mathematics, his real love, and physics. He was accepted at Cambridge for graduate work where he achieved his first fame. In 1925 he wrote a paper that reworked Heisenberg’s matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s matrix was for an electron in a particular circumstance and time but Dirac’s more elegant mathematics was relativistic. It encompassed all quantum particles in all circumstances and times. Dirac refined his work in his highly praised doctorate thesis, the first at Cambridge on quantum mechanics.
In 1926 Dirac wrote a quantum description of electron groups for which he is given credit along with Fermi. Actually Fermi published prior to Dirac. Both made the same predictions of energy levels but used different approaches. There was intense competition to be first to publish among theoretical physicists who were racing each other to solve the same problems. Those who published second usually received no credit. In his final paper as a student at Cambridge Dirac formulated a new quantum field theory explaining the creation and annihilation of photons in quantum terms. He would periodically return to work on this theory throughout his life.
After graduation in 1926 Dirac moved on to Bohr’s Institute in Copenhagen. Here he worked on linking Schrodinger’s wave formulation of quantum mechanics with Heisenberg’s matrix approach. But success in explaining this relationship was met by the realization that Pascual Jordan had beat him to the punch. Interestingly Jordan had lost out to Fermi and Dirac on his prior paper about electron groups because his mentor Max Born forgot to read his paper before leaving for a US trip. In 1927 Dirac moved to Max Born’s Department of Theoretical Physics in Gottingen Germany where he began a lifelong friendship with PhD student Robert Oppenheimer.
Dirac’s perspective on quantum mechanics did not include interpretation; something Bohr, Einstein and others were preoccupied with. Dirac thought in mathematical terms and believed quanta were impossible to describe any other way. He felt it was meaningless to try and visualize fundamental particles. Interestingly Dirac often thought visually in producing his equations. His engineering training included projective geometry and he learned to think in terms of shapes and translate those into algebraic formulas. Other theoretical physicists lacked this training which gave Dirac a unique approach.
Returning to Cambridge, in 1927 Dirac wrote a paper establishing Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and introduced the term Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). This work led to what would be considered his greatest achievement, the Dirac Equation. In his quantum theory of the electron he predicted something unheard of at the time, an electron with negative energy, now known as a positron. The idea of electrons with negative energy was not readily accepted by his peers. They couldn’t be detected. Where were they? Dirac first posited they were protons but this was disproven. He then adjusted his theory to predict a new particle of the same mass as an electron. Today these antimatter analogs to the electron are observed in radioactive decay and produced artificially.
In 1930 Dirac won accolades for his quantum mechanics textbook which became the standard for those capable of understanding it. Also in 1930 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In another episode of original thinking in a 1931 paper he theorized monopoles and implicitly the quantization of electric charge. Schrodinger subsequently called him “Monopolean”. In 1932 Dirac became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position once held by Isaac Newton. Dirac would stay for 37 years until his retirement in 1969. Ten years later in 1979 Stephen Hawking would assume the same Chair for thirty years.
Dirac was a theorist, not an experimentalist. The practice of crafting theory then confirming by experiment rather than the reverse was beginning to take hold following Einstein and the quantum community’s lead. When in 1933 the positron was confirmed by experiment, the old school Ernest Rutherford said “I would have liked it better if the theory had arrived after the experimental facts had been established.” Attitudes have shifted. Modern day theoretical physicist Kurt Gottfried said in 2002 “Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter stands alone in being motivated solely by faith in pure theory, without any hint from data, and yet revealing a deep and universal property of nature.” Dirac was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize for his theory identifying the positron.
With Dirac’s most productive years behind him, his attention became more scattered. He would always return to his quantum field theory to try to eliminate the many infinities that plagued it. He could not accept the new theories of quantum electrodynamics because they assumed a “bare electron”, one without a field. This led him in the 1950’s to reformulate quantum electrodynamics in terms of his quantum field theory. Dirac never tried to figure out what fundamental particles were. Only their interactions mattered. His new theory held that the charge of an electron was not in a particle but in the lines of force of a field strung between two monopoles. He called these infinitesimally small lines “strings” that behaved in accordance with the laws of quantum mechanics. Not the string theory of today, but it does seem to foreshadow the idea. This is one more measure of Dirac’s creativity, even twenty years past his prime.
Dirac married physicist Eugene Wigner’s sister, the Hungarian born Margit (Mancy) in 1937. Her two children from a prior marriage gave him an instant family. They added two daughters of their own. The outgoing combustible Mancy and withdrawn Dirac seemed a strange mix but despite domestic fireworks it worked. Mancy resented her treatment in Cambridge where she never felt accepted and believed her husband did not get the respect he deserved from the University. She was infuriated when Dirac turned down a knighthood in 1953. He didn’t want to be called by his first name. He preferred Mr. Dirac to Sir Paul. Twenty years later he would accept the even more prestigious Order of Merit from the Queen.
Even though Dirac considered Cambridge home, Mancy got him to move to the US in 1969 upon his retirement. She always liked the US and their children had moved there. Since Dirac was well past his prime as a physicist, leading universities like Princeton where he had done sabbaticals were no longer interested in him. However, Florida State University hired Dirac’s son in law and got Dirac to move to Tallahassee where he finished out his days working on his theories. He died in 1984. FSU used Dirac’s presence to help build its physics department and treated Mancy with the respect Cambridge did not give her. She had Dirac’s archives moved to Tallahassee where they reside today along with his grave. For a man who always worked in the most sophisticated scientific hubs his adult life, Tallahassee seems a strange place to end up, but he was a strange man.
Farmelo’s book is both a personal story and a science story. It holds appeal for readers focused on psychology and human interest as well as science fans. And as is typical in biographies of scientists, the personal story provides respite from sections of challenging science. I was particularly fascinated by the interaction among the scientists in the early days of quantum mechanics. The revolutionary discoveries in Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen and Born’s department in Gottingen are covered nicely here. We see how the personalities as well as scientific acumen mix and build on each other to formulate ground-breaking ideas in this exciting time.
Equally fascinating is a theme that runs throughout the book: theory vs. experiment. Which is more important to lead the way in science? Today the argument continues with those smashing particles to build on the standard model on one side and the string theorists on the other. Dirac’s entire focus was on beauty and simplicity in mathematics. He would fit right in with the string theorists as they craft eloquent equations. We can only wonder what his brilliance would contribute today.
Born to an English mother and French Swiss father in 1902 in Bristol, England, Paul Dirac would turn into one of the 20th century’s great scientists. His rigid taciturn personality caused Niels Bohr to describe him as “the strangest man.” Possibly autistic, from his early childhood throughout his life he kept to himself and talked as little as possible. His very strict father singled out the young Paul from his siblings for one-on-one suppers where they were allowed to speak only French. Paul Dirac deeply resented his father and blamed these excruciating evenings for his extreme reticence. As an adult he vowed never to speak French.
At the University of Bristol Dirac studied engineering then switched to mathematics, his real love, and physics. He was accepted at Cambridge for graduate work where he achieved his first fame. In 1925 he wrote a paper that reworked Heisenberg’s matrix formulation of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s matrix was for an electron in a particular circumstance and time but Dirac’s more elegant mathematics was relativistic. It encompassed all quantum particles in all circumstances and times. Dirac refined his work in his highly praised doctorate thesis, the first at Cambridge on quantum mechanics.
In 1926 Dirac wrote a quantum description of electron groups for which he is given credit along with Fermi. Actually Fermi published prior to Dirac. Both made the same predictions of energy levels but used different approaches. There was intense competition to be first to publish among theoretical physicists who were racing each other to solve the same problems. Those who published second usually received no credit. In his final paper as a student at Cambridge Dirac formulated a new quantum field theory explaining the creation and annihilation of photons in quantum terms. He would periodically return to work on this theory throughout his life.
After graduation in 1926 Dirac moved on to Bohr’s Institute in Copenhagen. Here he worked on linking Schrodinger’s wave formulation of quantum mechanics with Heisenberg’s matrix approach. But success in explaining this relationship was met by the realization that Pascual Jordan had beat him to the punch. Interestingly Jordan had lost out to Fermi and Dirac on his prior paper about electron groups because his mentor Max Born forgot to read his paper before leaving for a US trip. In 1927 Dirac moved to Max Born’s Department of Theoretical Physics in Gottingen Germany where he began a lifelong friendship with PhD student Robert Oppenheimer.
Dirac’s perspective on quantum mechanics did not include interpretation; something Bohr, Einstein and others were preoccupied with. Dirac thought in mathematical terms and believed quanta were impossible to describe any other way. He felt it was meaningless to try and visualize fundamental particles. Interestingly Dirac often thought visually in producing his equations. His engineering training included projective geometry and he learned to think in terms of shapes and translate those into algebraic formulas. Other theoretical physicists lacked this training which gave Dirac a unique approach.
Returning to Cambridge, in 1927 Dirac wrote a paper establishing Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and introduced the term Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). This work led to what would be considered his greatest achievement, the Dirac Equation. In his quantum theory of the electron he predicted something unheard of at the time, an electron with negative energy, now known as a positron. The idea of electrons with negative energy was not readily accepted by his peers. They couldn’t be detected. Where were they? Dirac first posited they were protons but this was disproven. He then adjusted his theory to predict a new particle of the same mass as an electron. Today these antimatter analogs to the electron are observed in radioactive decay and produced artificially.
In 1930 Dirac won accolades for his quantum mechanics textbook which became the standard for those capable of understanding it. Also in 1930 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. In another episode of original thinking in a 1931 paper he theorized monopoles and implicitly the quantization of electric charge. Schrodinger subsequently called him “Monopolean”. In 1932 Dirac became the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, a position once held by Isaac Newton. Dirac would stay for 37 years until his retirement in 1969. Ten years later in 1979 Stephen Hawking would assume the same Chair for thirty years.
Dirac was a theorist, not an experimentalist. The practice of crafting theory then confirming by experiment rather than the reverse was beginning to take hold following Einstein and the quantum community’s lead. When in 1933 the positron was confirmed by experiment, the old school Ernest Rutherford said “I would have liked it better if the theory had arrived after the experimental facts had been established.” Attitudes have shifted. Modern day theoretical physicist Kurt Gottfried said in 2002 “Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter stands alone in being motivated solely by faith in pure theory, without any hint from data, and yet revealing a deep and universal property of nature.” Dirac was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize for his theory identifying the positron.
With Dirac’s most productive years behind him, his attention became more scattered. He would always return to his quantum field theory to try to eliminate the many infinities that plagued it. He could not accept the new theories of quantum electrodynamics because they assumed a “bare electron”, one without a field. This led him in the 1950’s to reformulate quantum electrodynamics in terms of his quantum field theory. Dirac never tried to figure out what fundamental particles were. Only their interactions mattered. His new theory held that the charge of an electron was not in a particle but in the lines of force of a field strung between two monopoles. He called these infinitesimally small lines “strings” that behaved in accordance with the laws of quantum mechanics. Not the string theory of today, but it does seem to foreshadow the idea. This is one more measure of Dirac’s creativity, even twenty years past his prime.
Dirac married physicist Eugene Wigner’s sister, the Hungarian born Margit (Mancy) in 1937. Her two children from a prior marriage gave him an instant family. They added two daughters of their own. The outgoing combustible Mancy and withdrawn Dirac seemed a strange mix but despite domestic fireworks it worked. Mancy resented her treatment in Cambridge where she never felt accepted and believed her husband did not get the respect he deserved from the University. She was infuriated when Dirac turned down a knighthood in 1953. He didn’t want to be called by his first name. He preferred Mr. Dirac to Sir Paul. Twenty years later he would accept the even more prestigious Order of Merit from the Queen.
Even though Dirac considered Cambridge home, Mancy got him to move to the US in 1969 upon his retirement. She always liked the US and their children had moved there. Since Dirac was well past his prime as a physicist, leading universities like Princeton where he had done sabbaticals were no longer interested in him. However, Florida State University hired Dirac’s son in law and got Dirac to move to Tallahassee where he finished out his days working on his theories. He died in 1984. FSU used Dirac’s presence to help build its physics department and treated Mancy with the respect Cambridge did not give her. She had Dirac’s archives moved to Tallahassee where they reside today along with his grave. For a man who always worked in the most sophisticated scientific hubs his adult life, Tallahassee seems a strange place to end up, but he was a strange man.
Farmelo’s book is both a personal story and a science story. It holds appeal for readers focused on psychology and human interest as well as science fans. And as is typical in biographies of scientists, the personal story provides respite from sections of challenging science. I was particularly fascinated by the interaction among the scientists in the early days of quantum mechanics. The revolutionary discoveries in Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen and Born’s department in Gottingen are covered nicely here. We see how the personalities as well as scientific acumen mix and build on each other to formulate ground-breaking ideas in this exciting time.
Equally fascinating is a theme that runs throughout the book: theory vs. experiment. Which is more important to lead the way in science? Today the argument continues with those smashing particles to build on the standard model on one side and the string theorists on the other. Dirac’s entire focus was on beauty and simplicity in mathematics. He would fit right in with the string theorists as they craft eloquent equations. We can only wonder what his brilliance would contribute today.
March 7, 2010
Paul Dirac won a Nobel prize for physics. He was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. Among other things, he predicted the existence of antimatter, discovered the magnetic monopole solutions and his work was used as some of the basis for string theory.
What does all that mean? Other than the fact that Dirac was one smart motherf----r, I couldn’t tell you. Because it’s my curse to be fascinated by theoretical physics despite being so math challenged that I could barely scrape out a passing grade in college algebra. Yet I’m intrigued by black holes, string theory, the big bang, the theory of relativity, etc. So when I read a book like this, even though the author does a pretty good job of trying to put Dirac’s work into layman’s terms, I can usually still feel the breeze in my hair as the ideas shoot right over my head.
I can tell you that Albert Einstein once admitted to a colleague that he was having problems following some of Dirac’s equations, and that Stephen Hawking called him the greatest English physicist since Isaac Newton. A text book that Dirac wrote in 1930 on quantum mechanics is still in print and used today. So even a dunce like me can tell that Dirac must have been something special.
He was also a grade-A nerdlinger. Even the other physicists considered him an odd duck. Aloof, quiet and extremely averse to seeking attention, his peers made a game out of trying to get more than one-word answers out of him and usually failed. His idea of a good time was taking a long walk. When a layman asked him what caused the big bang, Dirac replied that it was a meaningless question and refused to speak any further on the subject. He wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.
The author believes that Dirac may have been somewhat autistic, and I guess it’s possible, but I’m a little leery of this new trend to classify every genius as autistic lately. But Dirac was such a private person that there was little personal insight for the author to draw on other than some interviews he did late in his life. So even after reading an entire book about him, I don’t feel like I know any more about him that I could have gotten from Wikipedia.
If you’ve got a flair for theoretical physics or are a huge fan of stories about eccentric geniuses, then there’s a lot to like here, but it’s not a casual read.
What does all that mean? Other than the fact that Dirac was one smart motherf----r, I couldn’t tell you. Because it’s my curse to be fascinated by theoretical physics despite being so math challenged that I could barely scrape out a passing grade in college algebra. Yet I’m intrigued by black holes, string theory, the big bang, the theory of relativity, etc. So when I read a book like this, even though the author does a pretty good job of trying to put Dirac’s work into layman’s terms, I can usually still feel the breeze in my hair as the ideas shoot right over my head.
I can tell you that Albert Einstein once admitted to a colleague that he was having problems following some of Dirac’s equations, and that Stephen Hawking called him the greatest English physicist since Isaac Newton. A text book that Dirac wrote in 1930 on quantum mechanics is still in print and used today. So even a dunce like me can tell that Dirac must have been something special.
He was also a grade-A nerdlinger. Even the other physicists considered him an odd duck. Aloof, quiet and extremely averse to seeking attention, his peers made a game out of trying to get more than one-word answers out of him and usually failed. His idea of a good time was taking a long walk. When a layman asked him what caused the big bang, Dirac replied that it was a meaningless question and refused to speak any further on the subject. He wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.
The author believes that Dirac may have been somewhat autistic, and I guess it’s possible, but I’m a little leery of this new trend to classify every genius as autistic lately. But Dirac was such a private person that there was little personal insight for the author to draw on other than some interviews he did late in his life. So even after reading an entire book about him, I don’t feel like I know any more about him that I could have gotten from Wikipedia.
If you’ve got a flair for theoretical physics or are a huge fan of stories about eccentric geniuses, then there’s a lot to like here, but it’s not a casual read.
October 26, 2016
Prologue
--The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius
Abbreviations in Notes
Notes
Bibliography
List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Index
--The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius
Abbreviations in Notes
Notes
Bibliography
List of Plates
Acknowledgements
Index
February 9, 2018
I really don't know how to rate this book. It deserves 5 stars for making Dirac its sole focus and for the portrayal of his personal life. However, there were two aspects of this book that really bothered me, which I will get to in a moment. The author gave an incredibly detailed account of Dirac's personal life. Sometimes when authors include that much detail, they are adding detail for detail's sake. Not so for this book. Every detail of his life was captivating to me. However, and this is the aspect of the book that bothered me most, whenever Farmelo, who himself has a PhD in physics, describe Dirac's work, he practically glossed over it. I have read other books, in which Dirac was not even a main focus, that did a much better job of highlighting his work. Every time Farmelo recounted an amazing achievement of Dirac's I felt as if I had been rushed through it. In fairness to Farmelo, the book was quite long as it was. That made me wonder if he had to choose between focusing on his work or personal life, and chose personal life.
It left me wishing Walter Isaacson had written this biography because I was hoping for a book that was equally rich with personal life and scientific achievement, like Einstein's biography. It is hard to rate a book that is as rich in personal detail as it is empty in detail about method and science.
Another aspect of the book that bothered me came in the afterword, when the author gave his personal opinion about Dirac and his possible autism. I am often fed up with author, and the general public really, labeling smart scientists as autistic. It happens far too often. That actually was *not* the case with this book. I felt that, up until the afterward, the author had made an extremely compelling case that Dirac was solidly on the spectrum. It was a rare case in which I felt the diagnosis was not being abused. However, Farmelo really should have let his prior words speak for themselves. In the afterward, he ranted about autism being caused by genes (there is so much more to it) and then pretty much diagnosed Charles Dirac (Paul's father) with it. Way to ruin what was a great narrative. The author also wondered whether Paul's brother had it as well. I thought that was fine. After all, it's merely speculation. Sadly, his opinions of Charles went well beyond speculation, and I found it annoying.
In the end, I have to conclude that this book was something very special. Many people could write about the science. It's been done so often and so well. The recounting of his personal life, in this book, was far less known and for that reason, this book is a true treasure. His personal relationships were fascinating, and the author brought so many of the characters in Dirac's circle to life.
It left me wishing Walter Isaacson had written this biography because I was hoping for a book that was equally rich with personal life and scientific achievement, like Einstein's biography. It is hard to rate a book that is as rich in personal detail as it is empty in detail about method and science.
Another aspect of the book that bothered me came in the afterword, when the author gave his personal opinion about Dirac and his possible autism. I am often fed up with author, and the general public really, labeling smart scientists as autistic. It happens far too often. That actually was *not* the case with this book. I felt that, up until the afterward, the author had made an extremely compelling case that Dirac was solidly on the spectrum. It was a rare case in which I felt the diagnosis was not being abused. However, Farmelo really should have let his prior words speak for themselves. In the afterward, he ranted about autism being caused by genes (there is so much more to it) and then pretty much diagnosed Charles Dirac (Paul's father) with it. Way to ruin what was a great narrative. The author also wondered whether Paul's brother had it as well. I thought that was fine. After all, it's merely speculation. Sadly, his opinions of Charles went well beyond speculation, and I found it annoying.
In the end, I have to conclude that this book was something very special. Many people could write about the science. It's been done so often and so well. The recounting of his personal life, in this book, was far less known and for that reason, this book is a true treasure. His personal relationships were fascinating, and the author brought so many of the characters in Dirac's circle to life.
April 21, 2017
The number of "if"s, "may"s, "probably"s and "likely"s in this book is alarming; the author speculates with a frequency that in the end (actually less than half way through, for me) undermines this detailed, comprehensive biography of one of the most influential and under-appreciated humans of all history. Biography is surely supposed to be factual. Forever filling in gaps with one's own guesses as to the subject's thoughts, actions and words is not helpful, it's misleading. This flaw really damages what could have been a definitive biography.
Since Dirac is not at all famous outside the physics community, I will mention why I think this is a travesty and redress the problem to a tiny extent: Your life has been root-and-branch influenced by Dirac's work. Yes, he was a Professor of theoretical physics working in a notoriously abstract, abstruse and just plain difficult field (quantum mechanics) that you may feel has nothing to do with your daily life - but you would be wrong if you think that. I know this because you simply would not be reading this without humanity having grasped the theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics underpins all of solid-state electronics - everything that makes modern computers, phones and the world wide web function would not be possible without it. You would not be reading this without the understanding of the world Dirac made such enormous contributions to. Heard of anti-matter? Dirac predicted its existence. Dirac's work underlies all our fundamental theories of how matter behaves; "particle physics", "the Standard Model", "Quantum Field Theory", whatever labels you might have heard it given, it is extra-ordinary the extent to which our current approaches to it relies on the work of Dirac. Quantum Mechanics has had more effect on modern society than any physical theory since the classical electromagnetism of the 19th Century that allowed for the distribution of power and lighting by electricity. Dirac has had more practical influence than any other 20th Century scientist - in my view he beats Einstein by a distance in this regard, despite Einstein's own contributions to the quantum revolution and the ever increasing importance of General Relativity to our daily lives. (Your car satnav couldn't work without GR).
Having mentioned Einstein leads me to why I'm reading about Dirac: if you've been paying attention to my reviews of late you will have noticed that I am retrospectively trying to determine whether Darwin, Einstein and Dirac were autistic, in preparation for a talk I am giving in July about the influence of autism on science and society. I concluded that both Darwin and Einstein had some form of autism. I have also concluded that Dirac was autistic. The evidence is overwhelming, even stronger than is the case for Einstein, which I found very compelling. The evidence in Darwin's case is weaker, but for me ultimately convincing. Now consider the impact those three people have had on the contemporary educated person's life, society and world-view. That's what autism has done.
Farmelo devotes a chapter towards the end of this book to the theory that Dirac was autistic. I caution readers about this chapter. It is heavily influenced by the views of two people who have each contributed to hugely inaccurate public misconceptions of what autism is and how autistic people think: Simon Baron Cohen and Temple Grandin.
Taking Baron Cohen first: he not only perpetuates the utterly false notion that autistic people lack empathy but whilst doing so re-enforces negative stereotypes about sex and gender using arguments and deceptions that don't so much break scientific ethics as atomise them. Temple Grandin, herself autistic, has repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that all autistic minds work in exactly the same way. Most famously, she assumed that, because she is a visual thinker, all autistic people must be visual thinkers and that this is a distinguishing feature, separating neurotypicals from autistic folk. When a tsunami of evidence that, to the contrary, not all autistic people think that way and a lot of neurotypical people do think visually crashed down upon her, she graciously accepted her error - but the misconception persists in the public mind and she's made similar errors about autistic thinking based on exactly the same false principle that if she's autistic and thinks in a particular way, all autistic people must do so.
Farmelo's chapter also perpetuates the notion that autistic people are emotionless; nothing could be further from the truth. The consensus view is that a fundamental aspect of autism is the inability to regulate emotion. This explains, for example, the tendency for autistic people to have "meltdowns" which are clearly an expression of extreme emotion.
Overall, then, this thoroughly researched biography is flawed by a lack of truly rigorous honesty, without actually outright falsifying anything, and a foray into psychological theory which is superficial and perpetuates numerous fallacious negative stereotypes about autism. This is a great shame because Dirac and the reading public deserve better.
Since Dirac is not at all famous outside the physics community, I will mention why I think this is a travesty and redress the problem to a tiny extent: Your life has been root-and-branch influenced by Dirac's work. Yes, he was a Professor of theoretical physics working in a notoriously abstract, abstruse and just plain difficult field (quantum mechanics) that you may feel has nothing to do with your daily life - but you would be wrong if you think that. I know this because you simply would not be reading this without humanity having grasped the theory of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics underpins all of solid-state electronics - everything that makes modern computers, phones and the world wide web function would not be possible without it. You would not be reading this without the understanding of the world Dirac made such enormous contributions to. Heard of anti-matter? Dirac predicted its existence. Dirac's work underlies all our fundamental theories of how matter behaves; "particle physics", "the Standard Model", "Quantum Field Theory", whatever labels you might have heard it given, it is extra-ordinary the extent to which our current approaches to it relies on the work of Dirac. Quantum Mechanics has had more effect on modern society than any physical theory since the classical electromagnetism of the 19th Century that allowed for the distribution of power and lighting by electricity. Dirac has had more practical influence than any other 20th Century scientist - in my view he beats Einstein by a distance in this regard, despite Einstein's own contributions to the quantum revolution and the ever increasing importance of General Relativity to our daily lives. (Your car satnav couldn't work without GR).
Having mentioned Einstein leads me to why I'm reading about Dirac: if you've been paying attention to my reviews of late you will have noticed that I am retrospectively trying to determine whether Darwin, Einstein and Dirac were autistic, in preparation for a talk I am giving in July about the influence of autism on science and society. I concluded that both Darwin and Einstein had some form of autism. I have also concluded that Dirac was autistic. The evidence is overwhelming, even stronger than is the case for Einstein, which I found very compelling. The evidence in Darwin's case is weaker, but for me ultimately convincing. Now consider the impact those three people have had on the contemporary educated person's life, society and world-view. That's what autism has done.
Farmelo devotes a chapter towards the end of this book to the theory that Dirac was autistic. I caution readers about this chapter. It is heavily influenced by the views of two people who have each contributed to hugely inaccurate public misconceptions of what autism is and how autistic people think: Simon Baron Cohen and Temple Grandin.
Taking Baron Cohen first: he not only perpetuates the utterly false notion that autistic people lack empathy but whilst doing so re-enforces negative stereotypes about sex and gender using arguments and deceptions that don't so much break scientific ethics as atomise them. Temple Grandin, herself autistic, has repeatedly made the mistake of assuming that all autistic minds work in exactly the same way. Most famously, she assumed that, because she is a visual thinker, all autistic people must be visual thinkers and that this is a distinguishing feature, separating neurotypicals from autistic folk. When a tsunami of evidence that, to the contrary, not all autistic people think that way and a lot of neurotypical people do think visually crashed down upon her, she graciously accepted her error - but the misconception persists in the public mind and she's made similar errors about autistic thinking based on exactly the same false principle that if she's autistic and thinks in a particular way, all autistic people must do so.
Farmelo's chapter also perpetuates the notion that autistic people are emotionless; nothing could be further from the truth. The consensus view is that a fundamental aspect of autism is the inability to regulate emotion. This explains, for example, the tendency for autistic people to have "meltdowns" which are clearly an expression of extreme emotion.
Overall, then, this thoroughly researched biography is flawed by a lack of truly rigorous honesty, without actually outright falsifying anything, and a foray into psychological theory which is superficial and perpetuates numerous fallacious negative stereotypes about autism. This is a great shame because Dirac and the reading public deserve better.
April 23, 2011
I enjoyed this book even more than I had expected to. Some background: I studied Physics up to the Ph.D. level (experimental elementary particle physics), and then left the field to pursue a career in computing. However, I retained an interest in Physics which became reactivated when I retired. As a physics student, my hero was Richard Feynman (I highly recommend "Genius", James Gleick's biography of Feynman) who was a very colorful character indeed.
However, being British, I was naturally inclined towards British physicists, and there was no more esteemed British theoretical physicist than Paul Dirac, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 (together with Erwin Schroedinger), and at the time was the youngest person ever to have won that prize. I still have a copy of Dirac's classic "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" on my bookshelf.
But I knew that Paul Dirac was a "strange bird", and that his father was a control freak who seriously damaged his son's mental state during his formative years. However, I didn't really know the details. This book furnishes those details.
Not only does the book explain much of Dirac's history and mental and emotional makeup (as far as one can with a man who was as seriously laconic as Dirac was), but it also describes in some detail much of the historical activities that were on-going during his life -- the rise of Hitler, Stalin, the Soviet Union, McCarthyism and the Manhattan project in the US, and more. The historical perspective is particularly rich and detailed. While the science is mentioned, it is by no means necessary to have a scientific understanding of what Dirac (and others) did to become such major figures. I don't believe there is a single equation in the book.
The author does an exceptional job of trying to capture what Dirac was all about -- a very difficult thing to accomplish given Dirac's lack of responsiveness. The author has obviously spent a lot of time researching the man, and has talked to seemingly all the major characters who were still alive during the time of his research. The size of the notes section, the size of the references section, and the size of the index show how much!
Some have taken issue with the author's discussion of whether Dirac was autistic or not (as has been suggested of other major scientific figures such as Newton and Einstein). I felt that the chapter that discusses that possibility was presented in a very fair way: evidence was discussed, and alternative ideas were included. Any true scientist (the author is a trained physicist) would do it that way, and would clearly state what his/her beliefs were, as opposed to other hypotheses. That's really what science is all about.
I only have some minor criticisms of the book, which are merely to do with its production and organization:
1) The book has no real Table of Contents -- there is one, but it's basically useless. It would be much better if one could use the TOC to find a particular chapter by name.
2) Each chapter has a 'name' (mostly related to a period of time), but the chapter title page does not specify a name, merely a chapter number. This makes things harder to find, especially given the lack of a true TOC.
3) There are voluminous notes on every page, and I found myself keeping on finger in the Notes section (towards the end of the book), in order to read whether a note was interesting or otherwise. Unfortunately, most notes consisted of short references to sources: books, papers, people, some of which referred to the References section, while other notes were more interesting and added useful information to what was being discussed on the page. A much better organization would have been to place the notes relating merely to sources in the notes section at the end of the book, while placing the other notes containing additional, interesting and relevant information as footnotes on the same page. That way, I could have avoided keeping that extra finger in the notes section, and avoided wasting time looking at abstract source references I didn't care about.
All in all, however, this is an extremely good book. I recommend it highly!
However, being British, I was naturally inclined towards British physicists, and there was no more esteemed British theoretical physicist than Paul Dirac, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 (together with Erwin Schroedinger), and at the time was the youngest person ever to have won that prize. I still have a copy of Dirac's classic "Principles of Quantum Mechanics" on my bookshelf.
But I knew that Paul Dirac was a "strange bird", and that his father was a control freak who seriously damaged his son's mental state during his formative years. However, I didn't really know the details. This book furnishes those details.
Not only does the book explain much of Dirac's history and mental and emotional makeup (as far as one can with a man who was as seriously laconic as Dirac was), but it also describes in some detail much of the historical activities that were on-going during his life -- the rise of Hitler, Stalin, the Soviet Union, McCarthyism and the Manhattan project in the US, and more. The historical perspective is particularly rich and detailed. While the science is mentioned, it is by no means necessary to have a scientific understanding of what Dirac (and others) did to become such major figures. I don't believe there is a single equation in the book.
The author does an exceptional job of trying to capture what Dirac was all about -- a very difficult thing to accomplish given Dirac's lack of responsiveness. The author has obviously spent a lot of time researching the man, and has talked to seemingly all the major characters who were still alive during the time of his research. The size of the notes section, the size of the references section, and the size of the index show how much!
Some have taken issue with the author's discussion of whether Dirac was autistic or not (as has been suggested of other major scientific figures such as Newton and Einstein). I felt that the chapter that discusses that possibility was presented in a very fair way: evidence was discussed, and alternative ideas were included. Any true scientist (the author is a trained physicist) would do it that way, and would clearly state what his/her beliefs were, as opposed to other hypotheses. That's really what science is all about.
I only have some minor criticisms of the book, which are merely to do with its production and organization:
1) The book has no real Table of Contents -- there is one, but it's basically useless. It would be much better if one could use the TOC to find a particular chapter by name.
2) Each chapter has a 'name' (mostly related to a period of time), but the chapter title page does not specify a name, merely a chapter number. This makes things harder to find, especially given the lack of a true TOC.
3) There are voluminous notes on every page, and I found myself keeping on finger in the Notes section (towards the end of the book), in order to read whether a note was interesting or otherwise. Unfortunately, most notes consisted of short references to sources: books, papers, people, some of which referred to the References section, while other notes were more interesting and added useful information to what was being discussed on the page. A much better organization would have been to place the notes relating merely to sources in the notes section at the end of the book, while placing the other notes containing additional, interesting and relevant information as footnotes on the same page. That way, I could have avoided keeping that extra finger in the notes section, and avoided wasting time looking at abstract source references I didn't care about.
All in all, however, this is an extremely good book. I recommend it highly!
March 27, 2020
Paul Dirac, the man Oppenheimer described as a Theoreticians Theoretician, was one of the key figures in quantum physics. Considering just how reserved Dirac was it it impressive that the author managed to write 500+ page book about him. Of course because of this, his story is mostly told through his ground braking work on quantum mechanics and through his friends and colleagues, and their reactions to his cold exterior (a lot of amusing anecdotes here).
He only spoke when he knew exactly what he was going to say and with such clarity that more than a few words were often unnecessary. His need for clarity and mathematical beauty is best shown with his colleagues reaction upon receiving his work: "as if they were already finished marble statues that descended from the heavens." Also his textbook on Quantum mechanics that he wrote in the 30s is admired and in print still to this day.
Unfortunately his need for mathematical beauty has stifled him in his later life, that he ended up just like Einstein in that they both couldn't except new developments in physics, but were humored because of their stature.
An finally, in the later chapters the author discussed in good taste the elephant in the room considering Diracs behavior and emotional coldness, meaning his very probable autism. He believed that beside his tragic childhood this also had to be mentioned in order to clearly understand this man, but he also clarified that we can never be absolutely sure of this.
He only spoke when he knew exactly what he was going to say and with such clarity that more than a few words were often unnecessary. His need for clarity and mathematical beauty is best shown with his colleagues reaction upon receiving his work: "as if they were already finished marble statues that descended from the heavens." Also his textbook on Quantum mechanics that he wrote in the 30s is admired and in print still to this day.
Unfortunately his need for mathematical beauty has stifled him in his later life, that he ended up just like Einstein in that they both couldn't except new developments in physics, but were humored because of their stature.
An finally, in the later chapters the author discussed in good taste the elephant in the room considering Diracs behavior and emotional coldness, meaning his very probable autism. He believed that beside his tragic childhood this also had to be mentioned in order to clearly understand this man, but he also clarified that we can never be absolutely sure of this.
May 28, 2023
قبل وفاته بأربع سنوات، تحدث الفيزيائي النوبلي الشهير نيلز بور Niels Bohr (ت1962م) عن بعض معارفه، وقال: «إنه من بين كل الذين زاروا معهدي كان ديراك (أغرب الرجال)!». الغرابة إذًا كانت هي السمة الأبرز التي أحاطت بشخصية الفيزيائي الإنجليزي بول أدريان موريس ديراك P. A. M. Dirac، ولذلك حين كتب الباحث البارز غراهام فارميلو سيرته البارعة لديراك عنونها (The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac) والتي صدرت عام 2009، وكتب أن ديراك اشتهر بـ”عجزه عن فهم مشاعر الآخرين، وافتقاره للباقة والكياسة”. وترجمت هذه السيرة إلى العربية عام 1436/2017م بعنوان (أغرب الرجال: ا��حياة الخفية لبول ديراك)، وتقع في جزئين استغرقت 700 صفحة.
ولد ديراك بإنجلترا في ٨ أغسطس ۱۹۰۲م، وأنهى التعليم الأساسي، وواصل تعليمه وتخصص في الرياضيات، وترقى حتى نال الدكتوراه عام ١٩٢٦م، واهتم بميكانيكا الكم، وتعمق في دهاليزه، بل استولى على كيانه كله، ووضع أسس ميكانيكا الكم النسبية في عام ۱۹۲۷م، وتوصل إلى المعادلة النسبية لحركة الإلكترون، وتنبأ بوجود جسيم البوزوترون الذي اكتشف عمليًّا لاحقا في ١٩٣٢م (لا تسألني ما معنى كل ذلك، لأني لا أعرف!)، ونتيجة لجهوده المميزة نال جائزة نوبل في الفيزياء عام ۱۹۳۳م بالاشتراك مع أروين شرودنجر، وواصل أبحاثه فيما بعد ونشر بعض الكتب المهمة، وتوفي في٢٠ أكتوبر ١٩٨٤م.
حين حصل ديراك على جائزة نوبل كان يبلغ من العمر 31 عامًا، ويعد من أصغر الحاصلين عليها من الفيزيائيين على الإطلاق منذ ذلك الحين، وكانت هذه سمة بارزة للمنظرين الأوائل في فيزياء الكم، أعني صغر العمر، فمعظمهم قدموا اسهاماتهم الثورية في العشرينات من أعمارهم كديراك، حتى أن البعض أطلق على هذا الحقل العلمي (Knabenphysik) أي علم الطبيعة الشاب، ولذلك كان ديراك وجلًا من تقدمه بالسنّ، فكتب أبياتًا ترجمتها: “بطبيعة الحال، فإن الشيخوخة قشعريرة حمى، لا بد أن يخاف كل عالم طبيعة منها، ومن الأفضل له أن يموت بدلًا عن أن يظل حيًا عندما يتجاوز سن الثلاثين!”. وكتب غيره عن أن الرياضيات “لعبة الشباب”، وقال عالم الرياضيات البارز غودفري هارولد هاردي G. H. Hardy (ت1947م) «لا أعلم أي تقدم رائد في الرياضيات أحرزه رجل فوق الخمسين!».
هل الأمر يختص بفيزياء الكم والرياضيات؟ في عام 1874م نشر جورج بيرد دراسة مهمة، فحص فيها “سير ما يزيد على ألف من المشاهير كي يتثبت من الأعمار التي قدم فيها هؤلاء الأشخاص إسهاماتهم الكبيرة في التاريخ… ووجد بيرد أن 70% من أروع الأعمال العالمية أنجزها أشخاص تقل أعمارهم عن الخامسة والأربعين، وأن 80% من هذه الأعمال أنجزها أشخاص تقل أعمارهم عن الخمسين”، ولذا استنتج البعض أن الذروة المطلقة في السيرة المهنية للعلماء يبدو أنها تقع ما بين 35-40 عامًا، وقد لاحظ بيرد أن “الإنجاز يميل للتزايد بسرعة حتى يصل إلى ذروته قبل سن الأربعين، ثم يتناقص تدريجيًا حتى يضمحل عند سن الثمانين”. وأكدت دراسات لاحقة هذه النتائج أو قاربتها، وكما يلخص أحد الباحثين، فإن دراسة هارفي ليمان (1953) ووين دنيس (1966) وكول (1979) وتسوكرمان (1977) وآخرين تؤكد حقيقة «أن إمكانية التوصل لإنتاجات إبداعية جديرة بالتنويه تميل إلى الانخفاض مع عبور المبدع للذروة الإنتاجية التي تقع حول سن الأربعين». وهناك أبحاث ونقاشات متنوعة تفرق بين العلوم والفنون، وغير ذلك. والأهم هنا: ما السرّ وراء هذا التحديد الزماني؟ يرى البعض أن “الحيوية العقلية تحتاج إلى درجة معينة من الصحة البيولوجية”، وهي تتوفر في هذا المدى المذكور، إلا أن هذا التفسير يفتقر للدقة، فمحطمي الأرقام القياسية في الرياضات كثيرًا ما يحققون ذلك في أوائل الثلاثينات وليس قبل ذلك، والتفسير الآخر أن البحث عن الاعتراف والشهرة تمثل دافعًا قويًا للإنجاز فإذا تحققت ضعف الدافع للإنجاز بعد ذلك، كما هو الحال في ما يسمى بـ(المرض النبيل) وهو التراخي العلمي الذي يصيب الفائز بجائزة نوبل، ومن جهة أخرى فإن تبعات الشهرة كالمسؤوليات والمطالب الاجتماعية أيضًا تعرقل استمرارية الإنجاز بالوتيرة القديمة. والتفسير الثالث -وهو من اقتراح جورج بيرد- أن الأمر يقبع بداخل الفرد، فالمؤثر الأساس في الإنجاز: “الحماس Enthusiasm والخبرة Experience، فالحماس يزود المبدع بالطاقة الدافعة لمواصلة الجهد، أما الخبرة فهي التي تمنح المبدع القدرة على تمييز الغث من السمين من الأفكار، كما تساعده على صياغة الأفكار الأصيلة بكفاءة عالية، لكن الخبرة دون حماس تؤدي إلى العمل الروتيني المتكرر، أما الإبداع الحقيقي فيتطلب القدر الكافي من الحماس والخبرة معًا”، ويرى بير أن” الحماس يميل إلى أن يبلغ ذروته في وقت أبكر من الحياة، ثم يذبل بعد ذلك باطراد، بينما تتزايد الخبرة بالتدريج مع تقدم السن، التوازن المناسب بين هاتين القوتين لا يحصل إلا فيما بين الثامنة والثلاثين والأربعين بحيث يكون ناتج المبدع قبل فترة الذروة هذه أصيلًا بدرجة كبيرة، أما بعد ذلك فيكون رتيبًا، وهكذا فإن الازدهار الذي يأتي مع سن الأربعين هو نتيجة التوازن الفريد بين بهجة الشباب وحصافة النضج”. انتقدت هذه الأطروحة بأنها ساذجة وسطحية، وطرح آخرون تفسيرات معقدة لا أود الإفاضة فيها.
أعود لديراك، في هذه السيرة المشار إليها استقصاء مدهش لحياة ديراك منذ الولادة وحتى الوفاة بتتابع دقيق ومفصل، يزاوج بين الحياة العلمية والعملية ضمن السياق التفاعلي لتغيرات الحياة، وانتقالات ديراك من أوائل البحث واكتشاف النظرية مرورًا بالإنجاز والاحتفاء ثم الزواج والتدريس والتنقلات، ثم الذبول والانتقال إلى الولايات المتحدة في سنواته الأخيرة. عايش ديراك كبار العلماء في ذلك الوقت كانشتاين وبور والعبقري روبرت أوبنهايمر (ت 1967م) الذي ارتبط به بصداقة عجيبة، وكان أوبنهايمر -الذي يعرف بقيادته مشروع اختراع القنبلة النووية- متعدد الاهتمامات خلافًا لديراك، فكان مهتمًا بالأدب بل وربما كتب الشعر أحيانًا، ومرةً وفي أثناء نزهة لهما معًا قال ديراك لصديقه أوبنهايمر: (لا أستطيع أن أتخيّل كيف يمكنك دراسة الفيزياء وتأليف الشعر في الوقت نفسه؟ ففي العلم يسعى المرء إلى التصريح بكل ما هو جديد بألفاظ يستطيع الجميع فهمها، أما في الشعر فإنك ملتزم بأشياء يعلمها الجميع مسبقًا بألفاظ لا يستطيع أحد استيعابها!). وأوضح ما يكشف عن غرابة أطوار ديراك هو علاقته العاطفية وزواجه من مانسي، فقد مكث سنوات طويلة حتى تجاوز الثلاثين لا يلقي بالًا للنساء حتى أورث الشك بميوله أو قدرته، فقد كان مستغرقًا في عمله، وبعد تعرّفه على مانسي أصبحت ترسل إليه بعض الرسائل العاطفية، وتحثه على التواصل، فكتب إليها في 10 مارس عام 1935م قائلاً : “أخشى ألا أتمكن من كتابة خطابات لطيفة مماثلة لك، ربما لأن مشاعري ضعيفة جدًا، وتتمحور حياتي أساسًا حول الحقائق، وليس المشاعر”، واستمرت مانسي تراسله وتمطره بالأسئلة، فرد مرة بالقول: (يتوجب عليك ألا تفكري كثيراً بي، وتهتمي أكثر بحياتك أنت والناس المحيطين بك، أنا مختلف جداً عنك، وقد اكتشفت أنه يمكنني الاعتياد بسرعة كبيرة على العيش بمفردي ورؤية قلة من الناس). ثم بعد إلحاح وضع أرقامًا لأسئلتها، وأجاب عنها بطريقة رياضية، هكذا: 1- هل تعلم أني أود رؤيتك بشدة؟ الإجابة: نعم، لكن لا يمكنني فعل شيء حيال ذلك. 2- هل تكن أي مشاعر نحوي؟ الإجابة: نعم، إلى حد ما. واستمر في الإجابة بهذه الطريقة الغريبة، وقد ظنت مانسي أن ديراك يسخر منها، وقالت باضطراب: “لم أكن أسعى للحصول على إجابات لأغلب هذه الأسئلة”، يبدو أنه لم تكن تعرف شخصيته بما يكفي، ولذلك بعد ان انتقدته كتب إليها: “يجب أن تعرفي أني لا أحبك، ومن الخطأ أن أدّعي ذلك، ولأني لم أقع في الحب أبدًا، لا يمكنني فهم المشاعر الرقيقة”.
ولكن استمر التواصل واللقاء بينهم، وفي مرة سافر ديراك خارج المدينة عائدًا إلى كامبريدج فكتب إلى مانسي: “لقد شعرت بحزن شديد حين رحلت عنكِ، وما زلت أشعر بأني أفتقدك كثيرًا ، لا أستطيع أن أفهم لماذا أشعر بذلك؟ إذ إنني عادةً لا أفتقد أحداً عندما أرحل عنه، أعتقد أنك دلّلتيني كثيرًا عندما كنت معك”. بدا أن ديراك يمكنه الشعور بالحنان والحبّ، على غير العادة، وهكذا انتهى الأمر لاحقًا بزواجه منها، إلا أن العلاقة لم تدم طويلًا كما يرام، ومع استمرار زواجه حتى النهاية إلا أن صلته بمانسي اتسمت بالبرود في معظم الأحوال.
على كل حال، كنت دائمًا حين أطالع هذا النوع من الكتب (مثل كتاب والتر إيزاكسون عن اينشتاين) أصاب بنوع من الإحباط حين لا أجد مماثلًا لها في سير عظمائنا ومقدمينا، وغالب ظني أن هذا الكتاب سيروق لمحبي السير الذاتية، لما فيه من ثراء وسلاسة وغرابة جذابة.
ولد ديراك بإنجلترا في ٨ أغسطس ۱۹۰۲م، وأنهى التعليم الأساسي، وواصل تعليمه وتخصص في الرياضيات، وترقى حتى نال الدكتوراه عام ١٩٢٦م، واهتم بميكانيكا الكم، وتعمق في دهاليزه، بل استولى على كيانه كله، ووضع أسس ميكانيكا الكم النسبية في عام ۱۹۲۷م، وتوصل إلى المعادلة النسبية لحركة الإلكترون، وتنبأ بوجود جسيم البوزوترون الذي اكتشف عمليًّا لاحقا في ١٩٣٢م (لا تسألني ما معنى كل ذلك، لأني لا أعرف!)، ونتيجة لجهوده المميزة نال جائزة نوبل في الفيزياء عام ۱۹۳۳م بالاشتراك مع أروين شرودنجر، وواصل أبحاثه فيما بعد ونشر بعض الكتب المهمة، وتوفي في٢٠ أكتوبر ١٩٨٤م.
حين حصل ديراك على جائزة نوبل كان يبلغ من العمر 31 عامًا، ويعد من أصغر الحاصلين عليها من الفيزيائيين على الإطلاق منذ ذلك الحين، وكانت هذه سمة بارزة للمنظرين الأوائل في فيزياء الكم، أعني صغر العمر، فمعظمهم قدموا اسهاماتهم الثورية في العشرينات من أعمارهم كديراك، حتى أن البعض أطلق على هذا الحقل العلمي (Knabenphysik) أي علم الطبيعة الشاب، ولذلك كان ديراك وجلًا من تقدمه بالسنّ، فكتب أبياتًا ترجمتها: “بطبيعة الحال، فإن الشيخوخة قشعريرة حمى، لا بد أن يخاف كل عالم طبيعة منها، ومن الأفضل له أن يموت بدلًا عن أن يظل حيًا عندما يتجاوز سن الثلاثين!”. وكتب غيره عن أن الرياضيات “لعبة الشباب”، وقال عالم الرياضيات البارز غودفري هارولد هاردي G. H. Hardy (ت1947م) «لا أعلم أي تقدم رائد في الرياضيات أحرزه رجل فوق الخمسين!».
هل الأمر يختص بفيزياء الكم والرياضيات؟ في عام 1874م نشر جورج بيرد دراسة مهمة، فحص فيها “سير ما يزيد على ألف من المشاهير كي يتثبت من الأعمار التي قدم فيها هؤلاء الأشخاص إسهاماتهم الكبيرة في التاريخ… ووجد بيرد أن 70% من أروع الأعمال العالمية أنجزها أشخاص تقل أعمارهم عن الخامسة والأربعين، وأن 80% من هذه الأعمال أنجزها أشخاص تقل أعمارهم عن الخمسين”، ولذا استنتج البعض أن الذروة المطلقة في السيرة المهنية للعلماء يبدو أنها تقع ما بين 35-40 عامًا، وقد لاحظ بيرد أن “الإنجاز يميل للتزايد بسرعة حتى يصل إلى ذروته قبل سن الأربعين، ثم يتناقص تدريجيًا حتى يضمحل عند سن الثمانين”. وأكدت دراسات لاحقة هذه النتائج أو قاربتها، وكما يلخص أحد الباحثين، فإن دراسة هارفي ليمان (1953) ووين دنيس (1966) وكول (1979) وتسوكرمان (1977) وآخرين تؤكد حقيقة «أن إمكانية التوصل لإنتاجات إبداعية جديرة بالتنويه تميل إلى الانخفاض مع عبور المبدع للذروة الإنتاجية التي تقع حول سن الأربعين». وهناك أبحاث ونقاشات متنوعة تفرق بين العلوم والفنون، وغير ذلك. والأهم هنا: ما السرّ وراء هذا التحديد الزماني؟ يرى البعض أن “الحيوية العقلية تحتاج إلى درجة معينة من الصحة البيولوجية”، وهي تتوفر في هذا المدى المذكور، إلا أن هذا التفسير يفتقر للدقة، فمحطمي الأرقام القياسية في الرياضات كثيرًا ما يحققون ذلك في أوائل الثلاثينات وليس قبل ذلك، والتفسير الآخر أن البحث عن الاعتراف والشهرة تمثل دافعًا قويًا للإنجاز فإذا تحققت ضعف الدافع للإنجاز بعد ذلك، كما هو الحال في ما يسمى بـ(المرض النبيل) وهو التراخي العلمي الذي يصيب الفائز بجائزة نوبل، ومن جهة أخرى فإن تبعات الشهرة كالمسؤوليات والمطالب الاجتماعية أيضًا تعرقل استمرارية الإنجاز بالوتيرة القديمة. والتفسير الثالث -وهو من اقتراح جورج بيرد- أن الأمر يقبع بداخل الفرد، فالمؤثر الأساس في الإنجاز: “الحماس Enthusiasm والخبرة Experience، فالحماس يزود المبدع بالطاقة الدافعة لمواصلة الجهد، أما الخبرة فهي التي تمنح المبدع القدرة على تمييز الغث من السمين من الأفكار، كما تساعده على صياغة الأفكار الأصيلة بكفاءة عالية، لكن الخبرة دون حماس تؤدي إلى العمل الروتيني المتكرر، أما الإبداع الحقيقي فيتطلب القدر الكافي من الحماس والخبرة معًا”، ويرى بير أن” الحماس يميل إلى أن يبلغ ذروته في وقت أبكر من الحياة، ثم يذبل بعد ذلك باطراد، بينما تتزايد الخبرة بالتدريج مع تقدم السن، التوازن المناسب بين هاتين القوتين لا يحصل إلا فيما بين الثامنة والثلاثين والأربعين بحيث يكون ناتج المبدع قبل فترة الذروة هذه أصيلًا بدرجة كبيرة، أما بعد ذلك فيكون رتيبًا، وهكذا فإن الازدهار الذي يأتي مع سن الأربعين هو نتيجة التوازن الفريد بين بهجة الشباب وحصافة النضج”. انتقدت هذه الأطروحة بأنها ساذجة وسطحية، وطرح آخرون تفسيرات معقدة لا أود الإفاضة فيها.
أعود لديراك، في هذه السيرة المشار إليها استقصاء مدهش لحياة ديراك منذ الولادة وحتى الوفاة بتتابع دقيق ومفصل، يزاوج بين الحياة العلمية والعملية ضمن السياق التفاعلي لتغيرات الحياة، وانتقالات ديراك من أوائل البحث واكتشاف النظرية مرورًا بالإنجاز والاحتفاء ثم الزواج والتدريس والتنقلات، ثم الذبول والانتقال إلى الولايات المتحدة في سنواته الأخيرة. عايش ديراك كبار العلماء في ذلك الوقت كانشتاين وبور والعبقري روبرت أوبنهايمر (ت 1967م) الذي ارتبط به بصداقة عجيبة، وكان أوبنهايمر -الذي يعرف بقيادته مشروع اختراع القنبلة النووية- متعدد الاهتمامات خلافًا لديراك، فكان مهتمًا بالأدب بل وربما كتب الشعر أحيانًا، ومرةً وفي أثناء نزهة لهما معًا قال ديراك لصديقه أوبنهايمر: (لا أستطيع أن أتخيّل كيف يمكنك دراسة الفيزياء وتأليف الشعر في الوقت نفسه؟ ففي العلم يسعى المرء إلى التصريح بكل ما هو جديد بألفاظ يستطيع الجميع فهمها، أما في الشعر فإنك ملتزم بأشياء يعلمها الجميع مسبقًا بألفاظ لا يستطيع أحد استيعابها!). وأوضح ما يكشف عن غرابة أطوار ديراك هو علاقته العاطفية وزواجه من مانسي، فقد مكث سنوات طويلة حتى تجاوز الثلاثين لا يلقي بالًا للنساء حتى أورث الشك بميوله أو قدرته، فقد كان مستغرقًا في عمله، وبعد تعرّفه على مانسي أصبحت ترسل إليه بعض الرسائل العاطفية، وتحثه على التواصل، فكتب إليها في 10 مارس عام 1935م قائلاً : “أخشى ألا أتمكن من كتابة خطابات لطيفة مماثلة لك، ربما لأن مشاعري ضعيفة جدًا، وتتمحور حياتي أساسًا حول الحقائق، وليس المشاعر”، واستمرت مانسي تراسله وتمطره بالأسئلة، فرد مرة بالقول: (يتوجب عليك ألا تفكري كثيراً بي، وتهتمي أكثر بحياتك أنت والناس المحيطين بك، أنا مختلف جداً عنك، وقد اكتشفت أنه يمكنني الاعتياد بسرعة كبيرة على العيش بمفردي ورؤية قلة من الناس). ثم بعد إلحاح وضع أرقامًا لأسئلتها، وأجاب عنها بطريقة رياضية، هكذا: 1- هل تعلم أني أود رؤيتك بشدة؟ الإجابة: نعم، لكن لا يمكنني فعل شيء حيال ذلك. 2- هل تكن أي مشاعر نحوي؟ الإجابة: نعم، إلى حد ما. واستمر في الإجابة بهذه الطريقة الغريبة، وقد ظنت مانسي أن ديراك يسخر منها، وقالت باضطراب: “لم أكن أسعى للحصول على إجابات لأغلب هذه الأسئلة”، يبدو أنه لم تكن تعرف شخصيته بما يكفي، ولذلك بعد ان انتقدته كتب إليها: “يجب أن تعرفي أني لا أحبك، ومن الخطأ أن أدّعي ذلك، ولأني لم أقع في الحب أبدًا، لا يمكنني فهم المشاعر الرقيقة”.
ولكن استمر التواصل واللقاء بينهم، وفي مرة سافر ديراك خارج المدينة عائدًا إلى كامبريدج فكتب إلى مانسي: “لقد شعرت بحزن شديد حين رحلت عنكِ، وما زلت أشعر بأني أفتقدك كثيرًا ، لا أستطيع أن أفهم لماذا أشعر بذلك؟ إذ إنني عادةً لا أفتقد أحداً عندما أرحل عنه، أعتقد أنك دلّلتيني كثيرًا عندما كنت معك”. بدا أن ديراك يمكنه الشعور بالحنان والحبّ، على غير العادة، وهكذا انتهى الأمر لاحقًا بزواجه منها، إلا أن العلاقة لم تدم طويلًا كما يرام، ومع استمرار زواجه حتى النهاية إلا أن صلته بمانسي اتسمت بالبرود في معظم الأحوال.
على كل حال، كنت دائمًا حين أطالع هذا النوع من الكتب (مثل كتاب والتر إيزاكسون عن اينشتاين) أصاب بنوع من الإحباط حين لا أجد مماثلًا لها في سير عظمائنا ومقدمينا، وغالب ظني أن هذا الكتاب سيروق لمحبي السير الذاتية، لما فيه من ثراء وسلاسة وغرابة جذابة.
March 1, 2014
This is one of the best books in terms of detail and insight into the brilliant character of Paul Dirac 1902-1984. Graham Farmelo, a British Physicist, has obviously done in-depth research, and I understand he had access to many of Dirac’s personal papers. The book won the 2009 Costa book award. The book is less a scientific biography than other books on Dirac, it emphasizes more the development of Dirac’s personality and the story of his relationship with his relations and colleagues. I learned a lot about Dirac, including his work on the atomic bomb during World War II. Dirac is responsible for several of the great breakthrough in 20th century physics and mathematics. He found the fundamental insight into quantum mechanics and remains the basic understanding even today. His textbook on Quantum Mechanics remains a rigorously clear explanation of the fundamental idea of quantum theory. He also developed the Dirac equation which is the basis of particle physics. He is known for developing quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics and the understanding the role of magnetic monopoles in electromagnetism. Dirac was the youngest theoretician to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics (1933). He also won the Max Planck Medal and the Copley Medal. He was the Lucasian Professor of mathematics at Cambridge University. The chair is now held by Stephen Hawking. Dirac’s work was so advanced we are only just beginning to prove and use his work. I read this as an audio download from Audible. B. J. Harrison did an excellent job narrating this long book.
September 24, 2019
Excellent biography of one of the geniuses of quantum theory. It goes into great detail on his personal life and character as well as on his results and methods. A bit more scientific background on the results would have been most welcome tough.
Like Einstein, Dirac believed that mathematical beauty trumps experimental results anytime. While that helped him in the first part of his career, it probably prevented him to achieve even more in his later years.
Still, he would have been delighted by the current fad of string theory which is beautiful but has yet to predict anything that can be experimentally verified.
Like Einstein, Dirac believed that mathematical beauty trumps experimental results anytime. While that helped him in the first part of his career, it probably prevented him to achieve even more in his later years.
Still, he would have been delighted by the current fad of string theory which is beautiful but has yet to predict anything that can be experimentally verified.
February 25, 2018
The author reveals the most human part inside Dirac. Also, give us an accurate view through his achievements in quantum physics. We can see that even he, a great scientist, had have errors in physics.
Amazing book !!
Amazing book !!
August 26, 2016
This biography provides vivid insights not only into the life and personality of the Nobel-prize co-winner P.A.M. Dirac, an intriguing 'hybrid' of an electrical engineer, pure mathematician and physicist, but also into the historic background of the era and the competitive atmosphere of the academic centres of the times (Cambridge, Göttingen, Copenhagen, Princeton). After reading Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality, I was interested to find out why Dirac seemed to be in shadows in the Einstein vs Bohr debate. Through a well-written, chronological story of Dirac's life, his familial and social environment and his personal and scientific development and decline, the author succeeded to shine a light on this brilliant and intriguing man who preferred thinking to speaking and was 'quite incapable of pretending to think anything that he did not really think'.
Dirac's scientific achievements were incorporated into the story line in a very readable and engaging way that reads like a scientific mystery novel interspersed with 'Dirac' anecdotes. To my regret, the final chapters of this scientific mystery left me puzzled and a little disappointed because the assumption that Dirac suffered of Asperger's syndrome was based on unreliable sources (two Dirac's colleagues who refused to be quoted) and because the author's assumptions of Dirac's scientific approach and contributions were unconvincing, being partly inconsistent and partly insufficiently-well supported. Consequently, the book left me with a number of questions. For instance, I would like I have understood why the delta function and the prediction of positron are associated with Dirac's name though the first who had invented the delta function appears to have been the French mathematician Joseph Fourier in 1822 and it seems it was Einstein who had suggested the existence of a positive electron in 1925, some six years before Dirac’s prediction. I would also really like to have understood what Dirac implied by the 'beautiful' mathematics, apart from the fact that he did not like 'renormalisation' (whatever it is), what it is exactly that made the author assume Dirac would have liked the 'beautiful' mathematics of the modern string theory and, especially, why Feynman was so impressed with the Dirac's 'little paper' on QM in which Dirac “had cryptically remarked that a critical quantum quantity is ‘analogous’ to its classical counterpart, but Feynman believed that the correct phrase was ‘proportional to’ ” and wanted to know what Dirac meant.
Obviously, Feynman did get it. But, dear Mr. Farmelo, I’m too far from being Feynman!
Dirac's scientific achievements were incorporated into the story line in a very readable and engaging way that reads like a scientific mystery novel interspersed with 'Dirac' anecdotes. To my regret, the final chapters of this scientific mystery left me puzzled and a little disappointed because the assumption that Dirac suffered of Asperger's syndrome was based on unreliable sources (two Dirac's colleagues who refused to be quoted) and because the author's assumptions of Dirac's scientific approach and contributions were unconvincing, being partly inconsistent and partly insufficiently-well supported. Consequently, the book left me with a number of questions. For instance, I would like I have understood why the delta function and the prediction of positron are associated with Dirac's name though the first who had invented the delta function appears to have been the French mathematician Joseph Fourier in 1822 and it seems it was Einstein who had suggested the existence of a positive electron in 1925, some six years before Dirac’s prediction. I would also really like to have understood what Dirac implied by the 'beautiful' mathematics, apart from the fact that he did not like 'renormalisation' (whatever it is), what it is exactly that made the author assume Dirac would have liked the 'beautiful' mathematics of the modern string theory and, especially, why Feynman was so impressed with the Dirac's 'little paper' on QM in which Dirac “had cryptically remarked that a critical quantum quantity is ‘analogous’ to its classical counterpart, but Feynman believed that the correct phrase was ‘proportional to’ ” and wanted to know what Dirac meant.
Obviously, Feynman did get it. But, dear Mr. Farmelo, I’m too far from being Feynman!
February 23, 2018
The book progressed just like Dirac's career. High and then a steady low. Farmelo has made a great attempt in making the readers aware of the life of one of the founding fathers of Quantum Mechanics, whose contributions I feel are over-looked when compared with Schrodinger or Heisenberg (although he shared the Nobel Prize with both of them). But as Dirac himself said, a theoretical physicist dies at the age of 40, same was the case with him more or less. The book got drab post Second World War, beyond which he hardly made any significant contributions to science. Nonetheless, the account of Dirac's formative years at Cambridge as a graduate student (also his most productive ones) when he laid the cornerstone of Quantum Mechanics along with Born, Schrodinger, Pascal, Heisenberg and Pauli was a motivating read specially for young grad students like me.
December 31, 2017
Out of all the physicists who developed quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, Dirac is my favorite. He had a unique intuition grounded in mathematics — especially projective geometry — and a sense of beauty applied to equations. The biography by Farmelo does a great job evoking Dirac's approach to physics, the thinking behind his many successes (the Dirac equation, the prediction of positrons, showing that magnetic monopoles result in the quantization of electric charge, the idea of the path integral before Feynman, a precursor to the use of strings as fundamental objects, and beyond) as well as some of the ways his intuition misled him.
The writing is at times clunky and speculative and I almost put the book down given what felt like too long an introduction about Dirac’s childhood, but I recommend persevering since the content is overall quite interesting. For example, I loved the chance to follow the history of physics in broad strokes starting from the atomic theory of Bohr that preceded quantum mechanics, all the way up through the atomic bomb and the development of quantum field theory and even string theory. The book gave a picture of the interconnectedness of many of these developments, and left me eager to read more detailed accounts focusing on each era of discovery separately.
It was intriguing to learn how certain aspects of the way we approach physics have been directly inherited from the past, as well as the many ways these ideas have evolved. For example, Farmelo touches on the influence of John Stuart Mill on the conception of “beauty” as a guiding principle of science around the time Dirac came to Cambridge. Additionally, it was interesting to see how much pushback there was against having theorists predict particles (e.g. positrons by Dirac, neutrinos by Pauli) since up to that point, it simply wasn’t how science was done. Nowadays, it is quite uncontroversial that experimentalists often work to verify the predictions of particle theorists, yet there are other areas where new ideas are objected to on the grounds that they diverge from the way science has been done in the past.
Dirac was an interesting character in addition to a brilliant physicist, and Farmelo includes a number of endearing anecdotes about him (for example, the way Dirac carefully measured the span of his children’s cat’s whiskers in order to build a trap door that was optimally comfortable for it).
The book ends with some speculation about Dirac being autistic. Farmelo is careful to qualify that it is risky to diagnose someone after their death in general, and especially as a non-expert. My main objection is that the chapter relies on some outdated ideas about autism. For example, Farmelo emphasizes that most people diagnosed with autism are men. While this is certainly true, there is growing evidence that autism manifests slightly differently in women and gender non-conforming people, whether due to differences in socialization or for some other reason. Since the diagnostic criteria are skewed towards the way autism appears in men, others may be under-diagnosed which could account for a portion of the discrepancy. Farmelo doesn’t just mention the gender skew but goes on to speculate that this might explain why there are so fewer women in physics than men, which made me cringe. This is sloppy, well outside his area of expertise, and most importantly wholly unnecessary to the argument he is trying to make (that Dirac may have been autistic) which is already somewhat speculative.
Added note: I also agree with another reviewer who commented on the danger of spreading the misconception that autistic people lack empathy, or that all autistic people are alike.
The writing is at times clunky and speculative and I almost put the book down given what felt like too long an introduction about Dirac’s childhood, but I recommend persevering since the content is overall quite interesting. For example, I loved the chance to follow the history of physics in broad strokes starting from the atomic theory of Bohr that preceded quantum mechanics, all the way up through the atomic bomb and the development of quantum field theory and even string theory. The book gave a picture of the interconnectedness of many of these developments, and left me eager to read more detailed accounts focusing on each era of discovery separately.
It was intriguing to learn how certain aspects of the way we approach physics have been directly inherited from the past, as well as the many ways these ideas have evolved. For example, Farmelo touches on the influence of John Stuart Mill on the conception of “beauty” as a guiding principle of science around the time Dirac came to Cambridge. Additionally, it was interesting to see how much pushback there was against having theorists predict particles (e.g. positrons by Dirac, neutrinos by Pauli) since up to that point, it simply wasn’t how science was done. Nowadays, it is quite uncontroversial that experimentalists often work to verify the predictions of particle theorists, yet there are other areas where new ideas are objected to on the grounds that they diverge from the way science has been done in the past.
Dirac was an interesting character in addition to a brilliant physicist, and Farmelo includes a number of endearing anecdotes about him (for example, the way Dirac carefully measured the span of his children’s cat’s whiskers in order to build a trap door that was optimally comfortable for it).
The book ends with some speculation about Dirac being autistic. Farmelo is careful to qualify that it is risky to diagnose someone after their death in general, and especially as a non-expert. My main objection is that the chapter relies on some outdated ideas about autism. For example, Farmelo emphasizes that most people diagnosed with autism are men. While this is certainly true, there is growing evidence that autism manifests slightly differently in women and gender non-conforming people, whether due to differences in socialization or for some other reason. Since the diagnostic criteria are skewed towards the way autism appears in men, others may be under-diagnosed which could account for a portion of the discrepancy. Farmelo doesn’t just mention the gender skew but goes on to speculate that this might explain why there are so fewer women in physics than men, which made me cringe. This is sloppy, well outside his area of expertise, and most importantly wholly unnecessary to the argument he is trying to make (that Dirac may have been autistic) which is already somewhat speculative.
Added note: I also agree with another reviewer who commented on the danger of spreading the misconception that autistic people lack empathy, or that all autistic people are alike.
September 19, 2010
Paul Dirac was a Nobel Prize winning British physicist who made fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics and predicted the discovery of anti-matter. He was also a social misfit with the emotional depth of a carrot. His awkwardness and literal thought process drives many of the anecdotes strewn throughout “The Strangest Man” by Graham Farmelo.
I won’t claim that the life of a physicist is terribly exciting, and Dirac’s was perhaps less interesting than most, but Farmelo expands his narrative to include both other physicists and the times in which they lived. The first half of the 20th century was a heady one for physics with Einstein’s theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics. It was also a time of world altering events featuring two world wars and the subsequent cold war that followed. Farmelo does a good job describing the times and despite the book's length it remains interesting throughout.
With respect to Dirac’s bizarre behavior, Farmelo postulates that he suffered from a high functioning form of autism. This would certainly explain his introverted nature and inability to relate to people on an emotional level. Despite, or perhaps because of, this disability Dirac was able to approach quantum mechanics with a single minded focus relying on pure mathematics to thresh out the underlying physical reality of matter. Unfortunately, he was also the epitome of an ivory castle intellectual, caring more for the theory’s elegance than its correctness.
I won’t claim that the life of a physicist is terribly exciting, and Dirac’s was perhaps less interesting than most, but Farmelo expands his narrative to include both other physicists and the times in which they lived. The first half of the 20th century was a heady one for physics with Einstein’s theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics. It was also a time of world altering events featuring two world wars and the subsequent cold war that followed. Farmelo does a good job describing the times and despite the book's length it remains interesting throughout.
With respect to Dirac’s bizarre behavior, Farmelo postulates that he suffered from a high functioning form of autism. This would certainly explain his introverted nature and inability to relate to people on an emotional level. Despite, or perhaps because of, this disability Dirac was able to approach quantum mechanics with a single minded focus relying on pure mathematics to thresh out the underlying physical reality of matter. Unfortunately, he was also the epitome of an ivory castle intellectual, caring more for the theory’s elegance than its correctness.
March 17, 2023
A well-crafted biography of an enigmatic founder of quantum mechanics. Dirac seems a difficult subject for a biographer, given how little he wrote that sheds light on his thoughts and emotions. Nevertheless, the author has done an excellent job with the material available to him, and the star-studded supporting cast including Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Fermi, Oppenheimer, and Feynman (to name only the most well-known bunch), make this a must-read for anyone interested in the heady revolutionary days of the early 20th century, when quantum mechanics turned physics upside down.
March 20, 2019
The Strangest Man: the hidden life of Paul Dirac, mystic of the atom Graham Farmelo -- a recent biography of one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, brilliant mathematical thinker and borderline-autistic recluse. He was there, and part of the conversation, at the time when Bohr and Einstein debated the philosophy of quantum mechanics and the math that underlies it - a case study in Davies book [Why Beliefs Matter]. Dirac was absolutely driven by belief. He had internalized a world view probably best characterized by John Stuart Mill, of a practical, evolutionary science, cumulative and refined by comparison with observation, subsuming prior accomplishments, but seeking ever wider applicability. He was foremost a mathematician, and "discovered" the relativistic generalization of quantum mechanics by geometric intuition, finding more joy in the beauty of his equations than in the subsequent validation when positrons were first observed and identified as the anti-matter particles predicted by his theory. A few choice bits from this book: after he had retired from Newton's chair of physics at Cambridge, and was being courted as a senior hire at Florida State University, in response to griping from faculty about spending scarce salary money on an old, pathologically quiet, and superannuated professor, his administrative defender asked in reply, "if the English department had the opportunity to hire William Shakespeare, would you pass up the chance?" Dirac's essentially Marxist views on religious beliefs were parodied by fellow physicist Pauli with the proclamation that "There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet." The technical content of this biography is gentle, and the personal insights and philosophical content generous. You might enjoy reading this.
January 26, 2014
Paul Dirac was probably the most fruitful quantum physicist involved in the revolution of Born, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Pauli etc., yet I barely recognised his name, let alone his achievements, before reading this. The title is certainly appropriate if unfortunate. Dirac was very peculiar in his deliberate withdrawn ness, becoming a little less so as he aged, and it seems that this was also related to his academic brilliance, whether through an underlying autism or extreme single minded ness. At times the personal interactions are humerous, especially the replies he gave to the woman who became his wife when she cola ones he didn't answer questions. Strangely, I felt that I could relate to this withdrawn nature, partly out of sympathetic reading perhaps, but also because there are times and circumstances where solitude and disengagement feels the more authentic response for me to take to the stress of 'people'. I suspect I'm not too unusual in this.
This book is nicely balanced between the personal and technical aspects of Dirac's life, working through it chronologically as might be expected. The reduction in productivity typical,of many physicists after hitting 30 (apparently) is discussed. This was somewhat true for Dirac, but not enough to convince me it is not a perception that becomes reality, rather than something inevitable. Certainly, the effect can be quite severe, with some of Dirac's colleagues becoming depressed and ending their lives as a result.
Overall, this book gives a personal insight into the nursery of quantum mechanics and arguably it's most significant contributor. Strange meets stranger. Not likely to be of wide interest beyond science book nerds and spouses seeking to learn about the strange ways of their scientist partners!
This book is nicely balanced between the personal and technical aspects of Dirac's life, working through it chronologically as might be expected. The reduction in productivity typical,of many physicists after hitting 30 (apparently) is discussed. This was somewhat true for Dirac, but not enough to convince me it is not a perception that becomes reality, rather than something inevitable. Certainly, the effect can be quite severe, with some of Dirac's colleagues becoming depressed and ending their lives as a result.
Overall, this book gives a personal insight into the nursery of quantum mechanics and arguably it's most significant contributor. Strange meets stranger. Not likely to be of wide interest beyond science book nerds and spouses seeking to learn about the strange ways of their scientist partners!
January 13, 2013
This biography is a well constructed and complete narration of one of the greatest physicists to ever live. Paul Dirac is a perfect example of being just the right man for the job at just the right time in history. He was raised in an academic household by a hard taskmaster of a father who required nearly endless study for his children and stifled all social interactions. Though Dirac had said that the only person he ever truly "loathed" was his father, the tortuous upbringing caused him to be the introverted master of clear thought that he needed to be. Dirac was first entering college in the years of Einstein's ascendancy, a time of upheaval and intriguing insights into the true nature of the physical world. The general theory of relativity was the first topic which inspired Dirac to be a theoretical physicist. This timing then placed Dirac in a position to develop one of the most influential branches of physics ever: quantum theory.
Having studied a bit of physics, I have heard of Dirac and seen many wonderfully elegant pieces of mathematical physics attributed to him. In contrast to the legend, by the time I was halfway through this book I was able to see Dirac as a human being whose work logically followed from what had been done before and was sometimes flawed. I always enjoy seeing the discoveries I have studied put into a context I can relate to. What really made Dirac head and shoulders above everyone else was his clarity of presentation and his dedication to mathematical beauty. While Feynman is one of the most interesting characters of physics, even he said, "I'm no Dirac."
Having studied a bit of physics, I have heard of Dirac and seen many wonderfully elegant pieces of mathematical physics attributed to him. In contrast to the legend, by the time I was halfway through this book I was able to see Dirac as a human being whose work logically followed from what had been done before and was sometimes flawed. I always enjoy seeing the discoveries I have studied put into a context I can relate to. What really made Dirac head and shoulders above everyone else was his clarity of presentation and his dedication to mathematical beauty. While Feynman is one of the most interesting characters of physics, even he said, "I'm no Dirac."
February 25, 2010
It wasn't until very near the end of this book that I finally identified the niggling something that had seemed strange throughout it. Most biographies are driven by emotional narrative. To put it in Myers-Briggs terms, they're F books. This book is clearly at T. But what could be more appropriate for the biography of a man so emotionally reserved that many who knew him later speculated that he might have been autistic?
Unverified psychological speculation aside, The Strangest Man is the extremely well researched story of the life of Paul Dirac, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and arguably one of the most brilliant physicists of all time. His major contributions to science were made during a fascinating period in the world of physics, as well as in the world at large. Dirac's life is entwined with many of the legends of modern physics, all of whom were caught up to some degree in the rise of Hitler, WWII, and the Cold War.
While the book seems to sag a little at the end, as Dirac approaches retirement and then moves with his wife to Florida, it is otherwise a fascinating glimpse into the birth of quantum mechanics, through the life of a man who was at once one of the pillars of the community and yet still an outsider. By all rights, the name Dirac should ring with equal weight to names like Einstein and Newton. This book illustrates both why that is and why it didn't happen.
Recommended to those interested in modern physics and/or the lives of brilliant outsiders.
Unverified psychological speculation aside, The Strangest Man is the extremely well researched story of the life of Paul Dirac, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and arguably one of the most brilliant physicists of all time. His major contributions to science were made during a fascinating period in the world of physics, as well as in the world at large. Dirac's life is entwined with many of the legends of modern physics, all of whom were caught up to some degree in the rise of Hitler, WWII, and the Cold War.
While the book seems to sag a little at the end, as Dirac approaches retirement and then moves with his wife to Florida, it is otherwise a fascinating glimpse into the birth of quantum mechanics, through the life of a man who was at once one of the pillars of the community and yet still an outsider. By all rights, the name Dirac should ring with equal weight to names like Einstein and Newton. This book illustrates both why that is and why it didn't happen.
Recommended to those interested in modern physics and/or the lives of brilliant outsiders.
April 14, 2010
Graham Farmelo writes a book on Paul Dirac who is arguably the greatest Mathematician? Physicist? the 20th century produced. In the book we learn about a boy who learned how to speak German (which he gave up speaking because of WWII), French (which he gave up speaking because of his upbringing) and Russian. He is also famous for lengthy and uncomfortable silences despite his fluency in multiple languages. We get to know how this boy went on to explain his insightful perspective on the universe with elegant mathematical equations and plain language.
The periodic breakdown format of the book makes it less intimidating than it otherwise it would be. We are able to follow Dirac from his formatives years. We are allowed to speculate on his influences where it wasn’t explicitly stated. Farmelo does a fantastic job of glossing over many of his insights. In Dirac’s case this would be a deterrent for most lay people. He does this without cheapening the experience.
This is a rich book that tells us how the science developed and brings out the excitement, anxiety, rivalry of scientific endeavor by looking at the life of one very strange but brilliant man.
The periodic breakdown format of the book makes it less intimidating than it otherwise it would be. We are able to follow Dirac from his formatives years. We are allowed to speculate on his influences where it wasn’t explicitly stated. Farmelo does a fantastic job of glossing over many of his insights. In Dirac’s case this would be a deterrent for most lay people. He does this without cheapening the experience.
This is a rich book that tells us how the science developed and brings out the excitement, anxiety, rivalry of scientific endeavor by looking at the life of one very strange but brilliant man.
January 17, 2010
This book isn’t about Michael Jackson! Instead, it is a biography of Paul Dirac, a British born physicist, who didn’t seem overly strange to me. He may not have been socially normal as far as “normal” is depicted in society. Farmelo ties to define Dirac’s personality from childhood abuse when his father made him talk French during their dinner conversations. Farmelo, a physicist, is good in reporting on Dirac’s life, and about his contributions to atomic theory (which weren’t as sexy as Einstein’s, but important) and to the building of the atomic bomb, but is not convincing in his psychological analysis of Dirac. In one of the closing chapters he examines whether or not Dirac could have been autistic. I felt like he wasn’t well enough informed about autism to even be trying to make that judgment. Besides, autism seems to be a catch all for many symptoms of unsociable traits. I closed the book thinking, Dirac seemed to be a very intelligent man who didn’t like to talk.
May 28, 2016
Fascinating read about one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, considered by many to be the best physicist after Einstein. An interesting man. The writer tries to make a case that Dirac may have been autistic, but the argument is only half-hearted, although interesting. I did appreciate that the writer nuanced Dirac's contributions to science with his own often self-critical perceptions. He also succeeds in giving a sense of some of the complexities of scientific discoveries, and their often unfinished nature during the process - it is often only in hindsight that their full power is understood. On the down side, I felt that although the writer clearly wanted to present a nuanced portrait of a complex man, he fell into the trap of assuming that a person is primarily one thing, one identity. I think Dirac escaped such attempts to pin him down. However, overall a very good book about someone who made huge contributions to 20th century physics.
August 20, 2016
Very thorough. This book goes into great detail about his personal life and the work he did as a fundamental physicist. The author manages to convey the importance of the work accomplished, and see how it fitted into the previous body of knowledge and the subsequent developments. You also get a good image of the environment he worked in Cambridge UK and as well the situations during the 1st and 2nd world war and life during then. You leave the book with a bit of a love for mathematics which is what Dirac would have wanted as well :)
November 22, 2009
I would never have thought a biography of a physicist could be a page-turner. I was wrong. Dirac had a very interesting life, and Farmelo tells his story well.
If you want to learn the details of Dirac's work, this is not the book for you. His ideas are presented in very general terms, without any scary equations. But even if you never studied physics, I think you will end up with an understanding of how Dirac's work fits into the advances made during the 20th century.
If you want to learn the details of Dirac's work, this is not the book for you. His ideas are presented in very general terms, without any scary equations. But even if you never studied physics, I think you will end up with an understanding of how Dirac's work fits into the advances made during the 20th century.
December 18, 2009
A lengthy biography of an interesting man. The author offers infrequent but insightful opinion. A very good book on the history of science.
April 21, 2014
It always seems interesting to read about the scientist behind major discoveries. Farmelo does a good job bring Dirac to life.
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