The English
physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) made significant contributions
to the development of quantum mechanics. He
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devised a number of new mathematical formulations
of quantum mechanics that have since proved to be of great importance. Dirac's
fame comes from his formulation in 1928 of a mathematical description of elementary
particles that accords with both quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.
The Dirac equation involved matrices rather than scalar quantities. These properties
of the Dirac equation were of major importance for theoretical physics. Moreover,
to everyone's astonishment, the Dirac equation provided the first rigorous description
of the spin of elementary particles.The equation having solutions for negative
particle mass, Dirac concluded that each particle should have an antiparticle.
This and other consequences of the equation were later confirmed by experiment.
Dirac is therefore considered to be a founder of modern quantum electrodynamics.
Dirac was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge (1932-1969) and professor
of physics at Florida State University (1971-1984). In 1933 he was awarded the
Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrodinger.
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