Paul Dirac, The Strangest Man, by Graham Farmelo

c. 2009

Paul Dirac: born 1902

College: Merchant Venturers' College, Bristol, England (his hometown)

1919: Einstein famous, based on 900-word article in The Times about observations verifying Einstein's theories; Paul was 17 years old

Dirac had to rely on "popular articles written by scientists, notably Arthur Eddington, the Quaker astronomer and mathematician at the University of Cambridge and the only person in Britain to have mastered the theory." -- p. 36

Einstein's theories, p. 41.

The relationship between space and time, p. 42; how it affected Dirac.

1921: College graduation -- Britain in worse depression since industrial revolution; unemployed

To local college, University of Bristol; projective geometry

1922 - 1923: encountered the ideas of William Hamilton, the 19th-century Irish mathematician and amateur poet

Mathematics not challenging enough; steered to physics

JJ Thomson, Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, 25 years earlier, "discovered" the electron

Dirac introduced to "quantum theory" by Arthur Tyndall; quantum theory described nature on the smallest scale

Quantum theory had been discovered -- largely by accident -- by Max Planck, the Berlin-based doyen of German physics, p. 50. Note: Berlin. -- page 51/52 explains what he was working on at the time. But quantum theory was "messy" for Dirac; it made no impression on him; his interest remained Einstein's relativity.

Wins scholarship for Cambridge, St John's College, specifically -- p. 53

Description of Cambridge, p. 55

TS Eliot, mentioned, p. 58

At Cambridge, attends lectures by Eddington, p. 61. His supervisor: Fowler, a mathematician. Turns out that Fowler was Rutherford's golfing buddy, and the only theoretician he could stomach

New Zealand-born Ernest Rutherford also there; Eddington and Rutherford diametrically opposed approaches to physics

Rutherford: most accomplished experimental scientist alive at the time -- p. 61

Rutherford's model of the atom: the electron was like a gnat in a huge auditorium; he first identified the existence of atomic nuclei in the summer of 192, at the University of Manchester, eight years before he moved to Cambridge to become JJ Tomson's successor as Director of the Cavendish Laboratory. At Cambridge, Rutherford first to propose that neutrons existed -- p. 62

At Cambridge, Dirac met two of Rutherford's "boys," who would become lifelong friends, and one, his surrogate brother: Englishman Patrick Blackett and Russian Peter Kapitza (to become his surrogate brother)

Kapitza probably introduced Dirac to Soviet ideology -- p. 65