Mathwar/Personlist/Dirac Paul: Difference between revisions
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(* August 8th 1902, † October 20th 1984 | (* August 8th 1902, † October 20th 1984) | ||
British theoretical physicist | British theoretical physicist | ||
Latest revision as of 12:28, 13 July 2009
Paul Dirac
(* August 8th 1902, † October 20th 1984)
British theoretical physicist
Life
In 1928, building on Wolfgang Pauli's work on non-relativistic spin systems, he proposed the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wavefunction of the electron. This work led Dirac to predict the existence of the positron, the electron's antiparticle, which he interpreted in terms of what came to be called the Dirac sea. The positron was observed by Carl Anderson in 1932. Dirac's equation also contributed to explaining the origin of quantum spin as a relativistic phenomenon.
Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics, published in 1930, is a landmark in the history of science. It quickly became one of the standard textbooks on the subject and is still used today. In that book, Dirac incorporated the previous work of Werner Heisenberg on matrix mechanics and of Erwin Schrödinger on wave mechanics into a single mathematical formalism that associates measurable quantities to operators acting on the Hilbert space of vectors that describe the state of a physical system. The book also introduced the delta function. Following his 1939 article, he also included the bra-ket notation in the third edition of his book, thereby contributing to its universal use nowadays.