Paul Dirac
P. A. M. Dirac (1902-1984)
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born in Bristol on 8th August 1902, the son of a Swiss immigrant father and a Cornish mother.
At the age of sixteen he entered Bristol University, where he graduated three years later in electrical engineering. He then studied mathematics for two more years before moving to Cambridge as a research student.
Although Dirac considered himself primarily a mathematician, he made important contributions to several fields of physics, including quantum mechanics.
The scientific establishment of the day quickly recognised his achievements. In 1932 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and from 1932 to 1969 he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge. (Other holders of this post include Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.)
In 1937 he married Margit Wigner, and adopted her two children, Judith and Gabriel. Paul and Margit Dirac went on to have two daughters together, Mary Elizabeth and Florence Monica.
Many people consider Dirac’s work to be as revolutionary as Einstein’s, but Dirac was a shy, reclusive figure, who avoided the limelight. He had little interest in the practical applications of his mathematics, preferring the abstract beauty of his equations.
