P.A.M.Dirac 1902-1984

11 January 2002

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This year sees the centenary of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, who was born in Bristol on 8 August 1902. He was arguably Britain's greatest physicist after Newton, and followed in Newton's footsteps in becoming Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University in 1932. His greatest contribution to physics came during the winter of 1927-8 when he combined relativity with quantum mechanics, and produced what is known as "the Dirac equation". This gave the correct relativistic description of the electron, and showed that it has spin (of half a unit). It also predicted the existence of antimatter, particularly in the form of "antielectrons" (positrons), which are like electrons but with opposite electric charge. In 1933 Dirac and Werner Schroedinger shared the Nobel prize for physics. Dirac retired from Cambridge in 1969 and moved to Florida, and in 1971 became Professor at the Florida State University in Tallahassee. This image is of a statue outside the University's Dirac Science Library. Dirac died in Florida in 1984, and is buried there, but a plaque commemorating him (and his equation!) was unveiled on 13 November 1995 in Westminster Abbey, London.

Credit: Florida State University

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