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)

AI overview

Paul Dirac was a British theoretical physicist who lived from 1902 to 1984 and made fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics and the theory of antimatter. His work laid essential groundwork for modern physics by combining quantum theory with Einstein's theory of relativity.

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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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Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: Austria
Active from: 1902
Active to: 1984

Official site Discogs

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Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 116
Total plays: 234

Similar artists

The Ballad Of You And MeFatbwoiJohannes Lauxen

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Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observations
· 1958 · cited 70,588x
“Mini-mental state”
· 1975 · cited 67,761x
Research electronic data capture (REDCap)—A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support
· 2009 · cited 45,549x
Cytoscape: A Software Environment for Integrated Models of Biomolecular Interaction Networks
· 2003 · cited 44,773x
SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 34,710x

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Quotes

“The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It therefore becomes desirable that approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation.”
“One possibility in this direction is to regard, classically, an electron as the end of a single Faraday line of force. The electric field in this picture from discrete Faraday lines of force, which are to be treated as physical things, like strings. One has then to develop a dynamics for such a string like structure, and quantize it.... 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.”
“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 the case of poetry, it's the exact opposite!”
“With my assumption... life need never end. There is no decisive argument for deciding between [certain] assumptions. I prefer the one that allows the possibility of endless life. One may hope that some day the question will be decided by direct observation.”
“It was a good description to say that it was a game, a very interesting game one could play. Whenever one solved one of the little problems, one could write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since then.”
“I don't suppose that applies so much to other physicists; I think it’s 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.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: Paul Dirac, 1933.jpg

Show 9 more facts

Commons category: Paul Dirac
date of death: 1984-10-20
Commons gallery: Paul Dirac
Erdős number: 4
name in native language: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
date of birth: 1902-08-08
birth name: Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
Stack Exchange tag: hsm.stackexchange.com/tags/dirac
P8168: Suuremõisa manor

Sources (9)

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~37 min read

Article

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.