He reshaped quantum mechanics: who is Paul Dirac?

Paul Dirac, 1902-1984, is one of the greatest theoretical physicists in history. He reshaped quantum mechanics with the Dirac Equation.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on 8 August 1902 in Bristol, England. His father, Charles Dirac, was a schoolteacher who came to England from Switzerland. His mother, Florence Holten, was a former librarian. It was named after Florence Nightingale, whom her father admired and met. Paul was born in the United Kingdom, although his mother is English, his father made him a Swiss citizen. Paul, along with his father, obtained British citizenship on October 22, 1919, at the age of 17.

Suffering in Silence

Paul had an unhappy childhood in their home, which was often strained by conflict between his parents.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is considered to be one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a professor of physics at Florida State University and the University of Miami, and a 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics recipient.

As a child, Paul realized that his father spoke only French and his mother only English. There were no visitors to their home, and Paul thought for a while that men and women spoke different languages. His father ate with Paul, and his mother with Paul's older brother Felix and younger sister Betty.

His father forced Paul to speak French and was not allowed to leave the table when he made a mistake, which Paul always made mistakes. Paul had a stomach acid problem but was diagnosed when he got older. As a result of this problem, he often vomited at the table, as he did not allow his father to leave the table. In this case, he learned to minimize French language mistakes by minimizing the number of words he spoke. Afterward, he did not speak French anywhere.

In fact, he was almost unable to speak at all. He withdrew into himself. He never initiates a conversation and has also become famous for the brevity of his responses to those who try to chat with him.

Schools

Paul attended primary school at Bishop Road Elementary. At the age of 12, he entered high school at Merchant Venturers Technical College, where his father taught. As Paul inherited from his father, he worked hard and nearly became the best in his class.

University of Bristol

Paul Dirac began his undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at the University of Bristol in 1918, at the age of 16. He graduated with first-class honors in 1921. Although his laboratory skills were scarce, his mathematical abilities were outstanding. After completing engineering, he wanted to study mathematics at Cambridge University, but his scholarship was insufficient. Therefore, he attended the University of Bristol for free. After two years of training, he graduated with first-class honors in mathematics at the age of 21. One of the courses he took at Bristol was projective geometry. And only a few years later, projective geometry helped achieve some of its marvelous results in quantum mechanics.

Cambridge University

Dirac left his family home in 1923, at the age of 21, to pursue graduate studies in general relativity and quantum mechanics. His doctoral advisor, mathematical physicist Ralph Fowler, introduced Dirac to Niels Bohr's new atomic model. In Bohr's model, electrons were confined to defined circular orbits around the nucleus. An electron cannot have any amount of energy. It can have specific energy defined only in its orbit. If an electron falls from a higher-energy orbit to a lower orbital, it releases energy as light. Similarly, when incident light causes an electron to jump into the higher energy orbital, that light is absorbed by the atom. By the end of 1924, Dirac had fully mastered quantum theory.

Heisenberg imagined the electron limited to moving back and forth along the line. The probability of the electron jumping to a higher energy level was represented by a series of numbers (matrix). There was a property in Heisenberg's matrices that he couldn't explain.

A Star Is Born

Dirac knew more mathematical methods than Heisenberg: After reading Heisenberg's paper, Dirac was considering the question AB ≠ BA in quantum mechanics. Poisson remembered something called braces. And that was the key to extracting a deeper meaning from Heisenberg's work. Dirac worked around the clock to write a paper he called Fundamental Equations of Quantum Mechanics. Taking an entirely different approach from Heisenberg's, Dirac presented quantum mechanics in a way that clarified the connections with Isaac Newton's classical mechanics. As a courtesy, he sent a copy of his article to Werner Heisenberg. Werner Heisenberg and its president at the University of Göttingen in Germany, Max Born, were stunned by Dirac's article. Heisenberg quickly got back to Dirac and asked some technical questions.

Heisenberg and Dirac became lifelong friends. Dirac was now well known. Although he had yet to complete his doctorate, he lectured other Cambridge students and professors on the latest developments in quantum mechanics. Dirac received his doctorate in June 1926 at the age of 23.

Having received his doctorate, Dirac left Cambridge in 1927 to work in the centers of quantum mechanics in Copenhagen and Göttingen.

Guru of Quantum Mechanics

Dirac completed his book Principles of Quantum Mechanics in 1930. Dirac's annual lecture course in Cambridge has become a legend. In 1932, at the age of 30, Dirac was appointed to Cambridge's Lucasian Chair of Mathematics, once held by Isaac Newton.

Nobel Prize

Dirac and Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics for "the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."

Some Personal Details

Dirac was a workaholic in the early years of his life. He worked long hours every day of the week. And he took long walks on Sundays.

Dirac didn't like advertising. He accepted the Nobel Prize after Ernest Rutherford said his refusal would be more publicity than acceptance. But he refused many awards, including a knighthood presented to him in 1953.

He retired from the Cambridge Lucasian Chair in 1969 at the age of 67. He moved to Florida, where he did research at Florida State University. He took a vacation in Cambridge because he was overwhelmed by Florida's summer heat. He died on October 20, 1984, in Tallahassee, Florida, at the age of 82. He was buried in Tallahassee's Roselawn Cemetery.