Quantum Mechanics: Ph.D Thesis of Paul Dirac

http://www.academia.edu/323246/PhD_Thesis_of_Paul_Dirac

by duggieawesome • 13 years ago

47 13 13 years ago

academia.edu

ColinWright• 13 years ago

See also:

Paul Dirac's handwritten notes for his PhD, the first ever on quantum mechanics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173

chm2• 13 years ago

"the first ever on quantum mechanics"

Well that's a statement.

ramidarigaz• 13 years ago

I guess that's Dirac for you. Unbelievably brilliant.

mohawk• 13 years ago

The statement is a little bit ambiguous, what is meant that he wrote the first phd thesis on the topic. I don't know if that is true, but at least that is what's claimed in the linked comment.

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

So smart at physics, yet he never figured out LaTeX.

cupcake-unicorn• 13 years ago

Haha, wow, I found myself having that kneejerk reaction as well. "Gosh, this looks so unprofessional, like a paper from middle school..."

RyanZAG• 13 years ago

It's from a time when academics (physics at least) was less interested in appearance and more interested in results. It's why there were so many breakthroughs. Today that has shifted with physics being more of a fashion contest to get funding.

CalinBalauru• 13 years ago

To my kwnolage (helped a lot by wikipedia) LaTex was first written in 1980. This paper dates 1926.

ivan_ah• 13 years ago

You must be logged in to download

I have said it before and I will say it again, because it needs to be said:

   F U Richard!

(for making people log in to access content)

UPDATE: On a more constructive note --- @RichardPrice, if you remove the "you must login to access" barrier, I pledge to upload all my papers to your website and I will even promote it.

uween• 13 years ago

I think these are just his notes on his thesis, rather than his actual thesis. I don't know what the source is, but this same document was posted on HN as his `handwritten notes for his Ph.D' (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173).

It's incomplete, full of corrections and deletions and covered in notes that are not referenced in the text.

Cambridge keeps a copy of theses submitted since 1920, so they should have a hardcopy of the real thing somewhere, but I wouldn't have thought it had been digitised. How fantastic it would be if they did though!

stared• 13 years ago

Being in the topic of Paul Dirac, there is a wonderful biography - The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, by Graham Farmelo.

It is an exceptionally well-written biography of one of the greatest physicists, and a rare combination of a page-turner and a book written with the English reserve.

Besides the history of an important part of physics, and its historical background (including the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, WWII and later - Cold War) one can clearly see that science is not a dry product, polished from its very beginning. It's a process, created by various people, of different personalities and views, having simple and genial ideas, making blunt mistakes, and having life besides science (even Dirac).

Also, it shows science (here: physics) as a sociological process, with its centre shifting from Cambridge (centred around E. Rutherford), Copenhagen and Gottingen to Princeton, Moscow, ...

When it comes to Dirac himself - it's a moving example of a person, who may look as cold and devoid of emotions, but in fact is a loving father, loyal friend (defending the imprisoned (P. Kapitza), and excluded (W. Heisenberg)) and a responsible man. And one, who had never became reconciled with his brother's suicide.

The biography leaves a little doubt when it comes to Paul Dirac's autism, or Asperger's syndrome. While introversion, withdrawal, reticence, and persistence may stem from different causes, being literal-minded, characteristic response to stimuli and poor insight into other minds are, IMHO, hard to interpret in any other way.

(And a nicer review by one of my friends: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mkotowsk/reviews/3farmelo.html)

Quantum Mechanics: Ph.D Thesis of Paul Dirac

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