Paul Dirac - Centenary of a great physicist

7 August 2002

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Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, one the greatest physicists of the 20th century was born 100 years ago in Bristol on 8 August 1902. 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. In this image, from the Pauli Archive at CERN, Dirac (right) is pictured in Oxford in 1938 together with fellow theorist Wolfgang Pauli.

Credit: CERN
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