The strangest man: The hidden life of Paul Dirac, mystic of the atom

558 Pages·2009·1.81 MB·English

by  Dirac

The Strangest Man
by the same author
it must be beautiful: great equations of modern science(editor)
The Strangest Man
The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac,
Mystic of the Atom
graham farmelo
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
Copyright © 2009 by Graham Farmelo
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Published in Britain in 2009 by Faber and Faber Limited
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from the Library of Congress.
LCCN: 2009925681
ISBN: 978-0-465-01827-7
British ISBN: 978-0-571-22278-0
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my mother and the memory of my late father

Contents
Prologue 1
The Strangest Man 7
Abbreviations in Notes 439
Notes 441
Bibliography 495
List of Plates 507
Acknowledgements 509
Index 515

[T]he amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been
proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and
moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be
eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
john stuart mill, On Liberty, 1869
We are nothing without the work of others our predecessors,
others our teachers, others our contemporaries. Even when, in
the measure of our inadequacy and our fullness, new insight
and new order are created, we are still nothing without others.
Yet we are more.
j. robert oppenheimer, Reith Lecture, 20 December 1953