By Helge Kragh

This primary full-length biography of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac bargains a accomplished account of his physics in its ancient context, together with much less identified components reminiscent of cosmology and classical electron conception. it really is dependent widely on unpublished resources, together with Dirac's correspondence with Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Schrödinger, Gamow and others. Dirac was once certainly essentially the most excellent and influential physicists of the 20 th century. among 1925 and 1934, the Nobel Prize laureate revolutionized physics together with his excellent contributions to quantum thought. This paintings examines Dirac's successes and screw ups, and can pay specific consciousness to his competition to trendy quantum electrodynamics; an competition in line with aesthetic objections.

Show description

Read Online or Download Dirac: A Scientific Biography PDF

Similar mathematical physics books

Practical applied mathematics: modelling, analysis, approximation

Drawing from an exhaustive number of mathematical matters, together with genuine and complicated research, fluid mechanics and asymptotics, this ebook demonstrates how arithmetic could be intelligently utilized in the particular context to a variety of business makes use of. the amount is directed to undergraduate and graduate scholars.

Kalman filtering with real-time applications

This e-book provides a radical dialogue of the mathematical idea of Kalman filtering. The filtering equations are derived in a sequence of straightforward steps permitting the optimality of the method to be understood. It presents a entire remedy of assorted significant subject matters in Kalman-filtering idea, together with uncorrelated and correlated noise, coloured noise, steady-state conception, nonlinear structures, platforms id, numerical algorithms, and real-time purposes.

The Annotated Flatland

Flatland is a distinct, pleasant satire that has charmed readers for over a century. released in 1884 by way of the English clergyman and headmaster Edwin A. Abbott, it's the fanciful story of A. sq., a two-dimensional being who's whisked away by means of a mysterious customer to The Land of 3 Dimensions, an adventure that without end alters his worldview.

Fractal-Based Methods in Analysis

The assumption of modeling the behaviour of phenomena at a number of scales has develop into a great tool in either natural and utilized arithmetic. Fractal-based strategies lie on the middle of this zone, as fractals are inherently multiscale gadgets; they quite often describe nonlinear phenomena greater than conventional mathematical types.

Additional info for Dirac: A Scientific Biography

Sample text

Dirac was content to get the correct formulae. For the change in wavelength of the radiation, he managed to reproduce Compton's formula, which expresses conservation of energy and momentum. As to the intensity of the scattered radiation, he obtained a result very close to that found by Compton in 1923 but not quite identical with it. "This is the first physical result obtained from the new mechanics that had not been previously known," Dirac proudly declared. 42 Dirac's treatment of the Compton effect was recognized to be a work of prime importance.

They also proved the frequency condition and the energy conservation law, both of which figured in Dirac's paper. But they did not make the Poisson bracket connection. During the fall of 1925 and the following winter, the formulation of the new quantum mechanics initiated by Heisenberg's paper was attended by stiff competition, primarily between the German physicists (Heisenberg, Jordan, Born, and Pauli) and Dirac in England. The Germans had the great advantage of formal and informal collaboration, while Dirac worked on his own.

Oppenheimer. Fowler, who gave another course on quantum theory at the same time as Dirac, attended with his entire class. "Dirac gave us what he himself had recently done, some of it already published, some, I think, not," recalled one of the attendants of the lectures. "We did not, it is true, form a very sociable group, but for anyone who was there it is impossible to forget the sense of excitement at the new work. " 52 Beginning in 1927, Dirac gave a regular course on quantum mechanics and was also assigned other teaching duties.

Download PDF sample

Download Dirac: A Scientific Biography by Helge Kragh PDF
Rated 4.70 of 5 – based on 37 votes