Desember 23, 2010
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Ebook Free The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, by Graham Farmelo
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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, by Graham Farmelo
Ebook Free The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom, by Graham Farmelo
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About the Author
Graham Farmelo is a Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University. He lives in London, England.
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Product details
Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (June 28, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780465022106
ISBN-13: 978-0465022106
ASIN: 0465022103
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
167 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#112,110 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Farmelo lays a good foundation explaining the status of physics in Dirac's youth. Einstein had just published relativity and the start of quantum theory had begun. Dirac's lifelong work was to combine the two new ideas. He succeeded in starting without completing it. It still has not been completed.Each chapter starts with a pertinent quote. Interesting.Explains Dirac's education in engineering and how that gave him a different viewpoint. Details his difficult childhood and his relationship with his family. Covers his marriage and family life. Notes that he probably suffered from a form of autism. Relates his connections with other physicists, Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, Born, Oppenheimer, Ehrenfest, etc.I found this revealing since Dirac did not express his feelings easily, but Farmelo relates situations that demonstrates Dirac's deep concern for others.One theme of Dirac's life was his long time interest in international communism.Peter Kapitza was a Russian physicist who worked Dirac and Rutherford at the cavendish lab in England. Kapitza was a communist, as were various others in England at that time. He seems to have converted Dirac. Dirac was always loyal to Kapitza, as well as to all his friends. This is another theme throughout Dirac's life, loyalty to others.It seems to me, that Dirac's love of beautiful theories, which allowed him to find hidden truth in physics, led him to hope that the beautiful promises of communism would reveal hidden social truth.Dirac's commitment to mathematical beauty was profound. Page 74 . . ."This fascination with the nature of beauty had powerful resonances for him. Like many theoreticians, he had been moved by the sheer sensual pleasure of working with Einstein's theories of relativity and Maxwells theory. For him and his colleagues, the theories were just as beautiful as Mozart's Jupiter symphony, a Rembrandt self portrait or a Milton sonnet. The beauty of a fundamental theory and physics has several characteristics in common with a great work of art: fundamental simplicity, inevitability, power and grandeur. . . From a few clearly stated principles, Einstein had built a mathematical structure whose explanatory power would be ruined if any of its principles were changed. Abandoning is usual modesty, he described his theory as incomparably beautiful."Page 401: "In June 1971, he had startled his audience at the Lindau meeting by considering "Is there a God" to be one of the five most important questions in contemporary physics. He said it would be useful to approach the question scientifically:“A physicist would need to make this question precise by understanding what is meant to a universe with a God and what is a universe without a God, having a clear distinction between the two types of universes, and then looking at the actual universe and seeing which class it belongs to. . . He said if future scientists demonstrated that the creation of life is overwhelmingly unlikely, then, in his opinion, this would be evidence for the existence of God. . . Dirac was taken to task by the press for these speculations but was not to be deflected and often returned to the topic, in public and in private."Fascinating insight. Reminds me that Gödel, another famous mathematician, believed he demonstrated a proof that god exists.One aspect of this biography I liked was Farmelo's careful description of Dirac's thinking at each part of his life. He does not try to impose a false consistency where none existed. No one is the same from youth to old age.This work does an outstanding job in showing the development of Dirac's thinking and personality. He also shows the development of quantum theory in a way that the general reader can easily grasp.One example is Dirac's atheism. As a young man he was openly atheistic. As years went by his thinking changed. Page 377 . . ."Dirac suggested to his readers that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and he used a very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. . . In his positivistic youth, Dirac would have regarded the link as unverifiable and therefore meaningless, but he had changed his tune."Well written. Easy to follow. Credible. Lots of use of original sources. 438 pages.Very good account of the development of the early years of quantum theory (a theory that has rocked our civilization) and the men who created it.Dirac is almost to quantum theory what Einstein is to gravity and Maxwell to electromagnetism.He deserves more appreciation than he receives. Perhaps his unconventional faith in mathematical beauty and the source of mathematical beauty has hindered his reputation.Extensive notes (800?) Wow!About 250 references in bibliography. Amazing!Twenty-three b/w photographsExhaustive twenty-three page index. Marvelous!
I rate this a top shelf biography. As a PhD in theoretical physics the author was appropriately trained to tackle the scientific side of this as well as his long infatuation with the subject (Dirac) which gave him plenty of impetus to get at the human side of the subject. He writes well, the story unfolding easily and warmly, taking us through the usual biographical flow of a life after beginning somewhat abruptly with a valuable late insight into Dirac's own thoughts on his father (in particular) and his life. This insight, gained from a former neighbour and colleague of Dirac's in Florida, shows us both an important human impact made on this man's life, as well as the author's research quality, seeking out and perhaps even going to the USA to interview this person.I knew about Dirac since student days, but since physics wasn't my subject and the quantum stuff way beyond me, I never bothered with finding out about him beyond the basics. But I am truly glad I bought and read this book. The subject emerges as a giant for me now, even though I little understand the intricacies of what he did. It is however, easy to appreciate the magnitude of what he achieved, how he was rated by mentors, colleagues and juniors. When Einstein recommends you as his first choice to appointment at the Institute for Advanced Studies, you know you're of some value as a scientist. When people of the stature of Oppenheimer and Feynman are in awe of you, you know you must be worthy of something. Such was it for Dirac.Unlike at least one of the reviewers here, I am disappointed that we don't get more technical explanations of some of the science. I realise that stuff is over the heads of most bio readers (including me), but I think it might be appropriate for scientific biographers to think about including such material in an appendix (especially when they are trained and capable as Farmelo is). A kind of Technical Details for Dummies appendix, as it were, including the equations, but explained as simply as possible - if that is possible, and I'm sure it is. I give as an example that succeeds admirably Pais' bio of Einstein, where the technical details are provided by the physicist-biographer in a manner that does not intrude for the non-mathematical reader but is highly useful for those who can benefit from it.I see one reviewer found a couple of historical inaccuracies. These are always likely to intrude in a work of this size and breadth. They can be corrected in a second edition and the reviewer thanked for drawing attention to them.In all I am very pleased with this work. I bought it about 8 months ago and have already read it completely twice as well as dipping into various index entries 10 or 15 times.Five stars.
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