The Scientist Who Discovered the World's Most Beautiful Equation

Newsthink is produced and presented by Cindy Pom

Thank you to our Patrons, including:
John & Becki Johnston
Igli Laci

Sources:
2:13 Virginia Knight / Cotham School, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, via Wikimedia Commons

Music
12:13 Music by Clovis Schneider

[Newsthink]

*What other biographies would you like to see?*

[ssake_IAL_Research]

I met Paul Dirac, near the end of his life, when he was professor emeritus at Florida State University. I was a typist for the Physics Dept. in 1983, and I typed what may have been his last paper (or one of his last), an overview of the field of physics. I kept a Xerox copy for many years, and finally donated it to the organization that preserves his legacy. I remember him as being very cordial to me.

[johngrint]

My favourite Dirac story comes courtesy of my old maths supervisor at Cambridge, who knew him personally. He recounted how he and his wife had entertained Dirac to dinner. As usual, Dirac said nothing the entire evening, but just sat there quietly observing the wife knitting, which he had never seen before but which clearly fascinated him. As he left at the end of the evening, he made a single remark: that there were just two distinct ways of creating a stitch. He was right, of course; but imagine having the kind of mind which could analyse knitting in the abstract and reach that conclusion!

[TLMuse]

I'm an astrophysicist and long-time admirer of Dirac. This brief bio of his life was exceptionally well-produced; bravo, and thanks for giving one of my scientific heroes the attention he is due. As a personal story, I once was invited to a scientific meeting at Cambridge, and they housed us on campus, staying in what had been faculty chambers. The room I was given I was told was once Dirac's quarters. They didn't know of my long-time admiration of Dirac, so it wasn't planned; what an unexpected thrill! —Tom

[louiserwin]

I was a student at FSU in 1982-1984. I saw him weekly at the Love and or Physics classrooms. Unless you knew who he was, he was just another older man who was incredibly nice and polite. Always a smile.

[_mayankgaur_]

Sometimes I feel so sad that the life of such important and genius scintists go unnoticed, whereas the life of celebrities are celebrated by the masses

[openroadiniran]

What no one is talking about is how young Dirac was when he published his paper on Dirac's Equation. He was only 26. Interestingly, Heisenberg was only 23 years old when he came up with is Uncertainty Principle. And Einstein was 26 when he published his theory of Special Relativity.

[stevevrismo]

Another perfect, yet sad example of how a wrong-headed parent screwed up their children's self-esteem. One son, dead by his own hand, the other, after decades of acclaim, only able to see his imagined failings. There's more to learn here than just the beauty and importance of Professor Dirac's equations. The science discussed in this interesting report is above my head -- not much I can do with it other than ponder its depths. The unspoken lesson here is one we can all learn from. I just hope that other viewers rethink how children are nurtured and raised.

[sdutta]

Given that he was apparently a bit of a recluse, it is interesting to note that he spent 6 months in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1928 to discuss various aspects of quantum mechanics with Satyendra Nath Bose, after whom bosons are named. The name was given by Dirac himself, who also coined the name fermion for its opposite counterpart — particles that followed Fermi-Dirac statistics. His modesty in not naming them after himself was apparent.

[jerzypawlowski]

Dirac achieved something very rare in physics - he theoretically predicted a new phenomenon (anti-matter) through pure math.
Not only that, but much of the math of Dirac was derived earlier by the mathematicians Eli Cartan and Wilhelm Killing. They studied the symmetries of space, and found that rotations in 3d space are equivalent to rotations in a special 2d space. This allowed Dirac to take the "square root" of the Klein–Gordon equation, which produced a linear and relativistic quantum wave equation (the Dirac equation). Dirac found that his equation has two solutions, one for electrons and another for anti-electrons (positrons).

[NoName-iptt]

I am an electrical engineer and I become aware of Paul Dirac during the course of harmonic analyze. Dirac Delta function is one of the crucial elements of that, and it helped me to grasp the Fourier analysis much better sense...

[lordfluxington]

Einstein, Dirac, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, Curie, Planc, Lorentz etc etc... it really was the golden age of Physics.

[jarnoldp]

I actually got a chance to meet Pierre Ramond. I bought a copy of this book on field theory, I did get it signed, and he spoke with the undergraduates, and told a few stories about direct. Some of this I was already familiar with. But it was a great video. this was after a major surgery where I had to learn how to walk again. So it was nice gift. I can see why Dirac and Ramond we’re good friends. Because even after meeting him for a couple hours, he was a very humble and kind man.

[RJPick]

My Grandfather taught Dirac Mathematics at school in Bristol. I only learnt this fact when my eldest son was talking to my father one day and he happened to mention it. My son now has a PhD in Physics investigating Neutrinos.

[romanieo]

Great video! Dirac stands immortal in the minds of many leaning towards science. Seeing him as an old man and experiencing his full journey is both sobering and insightful.

[BurntOrangeHorn]

In my undergraduate studies of quantum electrodynamics, Dirac and Feynman seemed to me to have the most intuitive understanding of the quantum world. Their genuis astounded me.

[varunnikam]

We need more movies on life like these scientists. Just like they did it with Oppenheimer. The world needs to know these great people who ever lived on the same planet as us.

[jimdecamp]

A Dirac story I heard was that when he was visiting Stony Brook University, there was a snow storm. A graduate student was "asked" to please see if he could help shovel out Professor Dirac's automobile. When he arrived, he found the tires (tyres) frozen to the driveway, and the driveway coated with treacherous ice. It seems that Professor Dirac, whose experience was with Britain and Florida's milder winters had "helpfully" poured hot water from the "kettle" (i.e., "teapot" in 'Merican) around the tires where it had frozen solid.

[etubdcj]

Thank you, Cindy, for lifting up the life of Paul Dirac!
I met him quite briefly near the end of his life, and his manner was very sweet and modest. He said that he regarded his own contribution to theoretical physics to reflect his luck to live in the "golden age of quantum mechanics", where new discoveries were like "low-hanging fruit".
His theory, which was the first to synthesize quantum mechanics with special relativity, predicted the existence of an anti-particle simply as a particle propagating "backwards in time", as Richard Feynman characterized it.
However, there was the confounding presence of infinite energy or mass in the theory, which took two more decades of theoretical physics development to explain away, resulting in what we now refer to as quantum electrodynamics, considered a triumph of theoretical physics.
Dirac saw within his lifetime the maturation of his theory into the integration of the weak nuclear interaction with his own quantum electrodynamics to form a successful unified theory. He also witnessed its further development with gauge field theory, SU3, and the Standard Model. All before he passed away.
My fond notion is that he could permit himself to let go of the label of "failure" by the end of his life. He certainly impressed me as a happy person.
~~~~Arthur Ogawa

[EndingSimple]

I'm moved that he finally found someone who would love him.