Paul Dirac

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM (August 8, 1902 – October 20, 1984) was a British theoretical physicist and a founder of the field of quantum physics.

Views

Dirac was a committed atheist. After being asked about his thoughts on Dirac's views, Pauli remarked "If I understand Dirac correctly, his meaning is this: there is no God, and Dirac is his Prophet".

Related Topics:
Atheist - Pauli

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Dirac was known among his colleagues for his precise and taciturn nature. When Niels Bohr complained that he didn't know how to finish a sentence in a scientific article he was writing, Dirac famously replied: 'I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.' While visiting the U.S.S.R., he was invited to lecture on his philosophy of physics. He merely stood up and wrote on the board: 'Physical laws should have mathematical beauty and simplicity.'

Related Topics:
Niels Bohr - U.S.S.R.

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When asked on some occasion about his views on poetry, he replied that '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 poetry, it's the exact opposite.'

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Dirac was also noted for his personal modesty. He called the equation for the time-evolution of a quantum-mechanical operator, which Dirac was in fact the first to write down, the 'Heisenberg equation of motion.' Most physicists speak of Fermi-Dirac statistics for half-integer spin particles and Bose-Einstein statistics for integer spin particles. While lecturing later in life, Dirac always insisted on calling the former 'Fermi statistics.' He referred to the latter as 'Einstein statistics' for reasons, he explained, of symmetry.

Related Topics:
Fermi-Dirac statistics - Bose-Einstein statistics

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