Paul Dirac
Paul Dirac
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac OM FRSwas an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a member of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, and spent the last decade of his life at Florida State University...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 August 1902
science opposites people
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it is the exact opposite.
science anxiety feelings
Well, in the first place, it leads to great anxiety as to whether it's going to be correct or not ... I expect that's the dominating feeling. It gets to be rather a fever... At age 60, when asked about his feelings on discovering the Dirac equation.
lying science law
The fundamental laws necessary for the mathematical treatment of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty lies only in the fact that application of these laws leads to equations that are too complex to be solved.
science talking long
I admired Bohr very much. We had long talks together, long talks in which Bohr did practically all the talking.
nature science interesting
As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen.
beautiful science thinking
I think it is a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do. At age 60.
science understanding equations
I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it.
science biographies rooms
When [Erwin Schrödinger] went to the Solvay conferences in Brussels, he would walk from the station to the hotel where the delegates stayed, carrying all his luggage in a rucksack and looking so like a tramp that it needed a great deal of argument at the reception desk before he could claim a room.
bare cannot electron imagine piece since string theory
In such a theory a bare electron would be inconceivable, since one cannot imagine the end of a piece of string without having the string.
discrete electric field lines physical picture treated
The electric field in this picture from discrete Faraday lines of force, which are to be treated as physical things, like strings.
book math physics
A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.
country different culture
It is quite clear that beauty does depend on one's culture and upbringing for certain kinds of beauty, pictures, literature, poetry and so on...But mathematical beauty is of a rather different kind. I should say perhaps it is of a completely different kind and transcends these personal factors. It is the same in all countries and at all periods of time.
chemistry physics mechanic
Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics.
strong thinking ideas
I think it is the general rule that the originator of a new idea is not the most suitable person to develop it, because his fears of something going wrong are really too strong... At age 69.