Paul Dirac

Also known as Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, Paul A M Dirac, P A M Dirac, P. A. M. Dirac

British theoretical physicist (1902–1984)

OverviewAI-generated

Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac was a mathematician and theoretical physicist who worked in quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was educated at the University of Bristol and the University of Cambridge. His professional career included positions as a professor at the University of Cambridge, St John's College, the University of Miami, and Florida State University.

Dirac received the Nobel Prize in Physics, the Copley Medal, and the Royal Medal. He was a member of the Royal Society, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He also held the title of Fellow of the Royal Society. His doctoral advisor was Ralph H. Fowler, and his doctoral students included Homi Jehangir Bhabha, Fred Hoyle, Dennis W. Sciama, and John Polkinghorne.

Born in Bristol in 1902, Dirac died in Tallahassee in 1984. He held citizenship in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. He suffered from prosopagnosia and followed a deist worldview. His notable works include *Les principes de la mécanique quantique* and *From a life of physics*.

Synthesized by Vinony from 43 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1902
Died: 1984
Works: 29

Top works

Les principes de la mécanique quantique
From a life of physics
Kvantovaja teorija
QUANTISED SINGULARITIES IN THE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD. In Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A. Volume 133. 1931. pp. 60-72.
THE QUANTUM THEORY OF THE EMISSION AND ABSORPTION OF RADIATION. Proceedings of the Royal Society. Series A. Vol. 114. No. A 767 pp. 243-265. THE QUANTUM THEORY OF DISPERSION. Proceedings of the Royal Society. Series A. Vol. 114. No. A 769. pp. 710-728. Two Papers.

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Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physics1933
“for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory”
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Wikidata facts

Instance of: human
Given name: Maurice
Gender: male
Citizenship: Switzerland
Place of birth: Bristol
Place of death: Tallahassee
Occupation: engineer
Position held: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics
Employer: St John's College
Languages spoken: French
Native language: French
Religion: deism
Notable work: Fermi–Dirac statistics
Academic degree: Doctor of Philosophy
Doctoral advisor: Ralph H. Fowler
Student of: Ralph H. Fowler
Field of work: quantum electrodynamics
Image: Paul Dirac, 1933.jpg
Residence: United Kingdom

Show 20 more facts

Commons category: Paul Dirac
member of: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
date of death: 1984-10-20
Commons gallery: Paul Dirac
topic's main category: Category:Paul Dirac
student: Paul Weiss
Erdős number: 4
medical condition: prosopagnosia
nominated for: Nobel Prize in Physics
relative: Eugene Wigner
name in native language: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
influenced by: John Stuart Mill
date of birth: 1902-08-08
writing language: English language
birth name: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Stack Exchange tag: hsm.stackexchange.com/tags/dirac
on focus list of Wikimedia project: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/4
maintained by WikiProject: WikiProject Mathematics
P8168: Suuremõisa manor
interested in: physics

Sources (9)

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Encyclopedic overview

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (/dɪ.ˈræk/, dih-RAK; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was a British theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Dirac laid the foundations for both quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, coining the former term. He was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1932 to 1969, and a professor of physics at Florida State University from 1970 to 1984. Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."

Dirac graduated from the University of Bristol with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1921, and a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics in 1923. Dirac then graduated from St John's College, Cambridge, with a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics in 1926, writing the first ever thesis on quantum mechanics.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paul Dirac” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.