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It is that time again for another mini history lesson on a dead mathematician. Now before you start thinking to yourself, "So what? I study logic and numbers, not people!" remember that everything we learn day after day has come from some person and their toils. If it had not been for the great mathematicians of the past, we would not have the plethora of mathematical concepts that we have today. Think of it rather in this way, we are simply historians studying the history of logic and numbers. Now on with today's lesson…
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born August 8, 1902 in Bristol, England. His parents were from Switzerland and England and they raised him in a very strict household. His teachers at his first primary school noticed Dirac's mathematical ability. He attended secondary school during the beginning of World War I, which meant that he had access to the science laboratories because the older boys had left to fight in the war. At the age of 16 he attended the University of Bristol to study electrical engineering.
In 1923 Dirac started his research at Cambridge. He wanted to aid in research of the general theory of relativity, but instead he had to work with Ralph Fowler who was researching the quantum theory of atoms. It was during this time that he was associated with Heisenberg.
The famous ½ spin Dirac equation was a connection between relativity and quantum mechanics, a marriage of his interests. Dirac was described as having a "very characteristic approach:
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abstract but simple, always electing the important points and arguing with unbeatable logic". I encountered some of Dirac's work using the Dirac delta function to aid in solving Fourier transforms in physics. In essence, Fourier transforms can be used to solve problems dealing with oscillations and forces. The Dirac delta function is used to simplify and smooth out the distribution of an integral.
Dirac also contributed to classical electron theory. During World War II he worked on uranium separation and nuclear weapons. For this he was not allowed to visit the Soviet Union until after the war. He also focused on large numbers and cosmology. Dirac made large contributions to physics; he also had outstanding work in pure mathematics. Dirac taught at and visited many universities across the world.
Short spoken, Dirac only said what he meant to say. He is quoted as saying "I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it." We could probably all take a few lessons from that! From all the work that Dirac accomplished he earned many awards. Dirac would not accept honorary degrees but he did accept honorary memberships to many academies and learned societies.
In 1933 Dirac was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Physics which he shared with Shrodinger. Dirac had not wanted to accept the award due to the publicity of it, but someone talked him into accepting it on the grounds that he would gain more attention by not accepting the award. On October 20, 1984 Paul Dirac departed from this world leaving it richer due to his mathematical discoveries.
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