Paul Dirac

From Wikinfo

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

Biography

Dirac was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England. In 1926 he developed a version of quantum mechanics, which included �Matrix Mechanics� and �Wave Mechanics� as special cases.

In 1928, building on Pauli's work on nonrelativistic spin systems, he derived the Dirac equation, a relativistic equation describing the electron. This allowed Dirac to formulate the Dirac sea and predict the existence of the positron, the electron's anti-particle; the positron was subsequently observed by Anderson in 1932. Dirac explained the origin of quantum spin as a relativistic phenomenon.

Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, published in 1930, pioneered the use of linear operators as a generalization of the theories of Heisenberg and [[Erwin Schr�dinger|Schr�dinger]]. It also introduced the bra-ket notation, in which |ψ>, ket, denotes a state vector in the Hilbert space of a system and <ψ|, bra, its dual vector. <ψ|ψ> denotes an inner product. Dirac also introduced Dirac's delta function.

Dirac shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933 with [[Erwin Schr�dinger]] "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". Dirac was Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge from 1932 to 1969 and an undergraduate at Bristol University. The Dirac Prize is awarded in his honour.

Dirac spent his last years at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. The Physics Department awards the Dirac-Hellmann award. The Dirac-Hellman Award was endowed by Dr. Bruce Hellman (Dirac's last Ph.D. student) in 1997 to reward outstanding work in theoretical physics by FSU researchers.

Dirac died in Tallahassee, Florida.

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".