Graham Farmelo's "The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom"

Here is what Stephen Hawking said of Paul Dirac, his predecessor holding Newton's Lucasian professorship at Cambridge University:

It has taken eleven years for the nation to recognise that he [Paul Dirac] was probably the greatest British theoretical physicist since Newton, and belatedly to erect a plaque to him in Westminster Abbey. It is my taks to explain why. That is, why he was so great, not why it took so long.

This is a good solid biography of Dirac. The author makes it abundantly clear that Dirac suffered from autism spectrum disorder. He does play into the kind of Freudian explanation of a "bad upbringing" but it is clear to me that the real root cause was autism. It ran in the family. As the author points out, it is likely that his father suffered the disease. In many ways Paul Dirac recapitulated his father's disasterous life, only with a great deal more intelligence and fame.

The book gives a good taste of the miraculous years during the late 1920s/early 1930s when quantum physics was created in just a handful of years. He also makes it very clear why other physicists were in such awe of Dirac. The author cites Freeman Dyson's comment:

The great papers of the other quantum pioneers were more ragged, less perfectly formed than Dirac's. His great discoveries were like exquisitely carved marble statues falling out of the sky, one after another. He seemed to be able to conquer laws of nature from pure thought -- it was this purity that made him unique.

I remember being told back in the 1960s to read Dirac to get the clearest presentation of quantum theory. Sadly I didn't. So I'm relegated to reading second-hand stories of his genius. But this is certainly better than nothing. He was an amazing man and this book makes sense of his life.

The story of Dirac's life is sad. He was so isolated. He lived so long after this great discoveries and worked so hard but gradually went into decline with age like all physicists. He didn't easily move into the role of "grand old man" with heartwarming stories and an avuncular interest in the younger generation. He kept working. He had some great doctoral students (always a good sign of a great mind). But he himself knew that his greatest days were behind him by the time he was 35 years old.

The book has a number of typos. Sadly books aren't proofread as carefully as they were half a century ago. I find this exceedingly odd since we now have software tools to check spelling, grammar, and look for common typos. But apparantly publishers can't be bothered. That is hard to believe, but from what I can tell it is true. This book suffers from a few glaring typos. The one that bugged me the most was the reference to the Kent State killings as happening in 1971 when in fact it occurred in 1970. On the other hand, I must applaud this author for doing what so many biographers fail to do: provide an easy device to track time. Each chapter gives the time frame and there are enough embedded references in the text to easily orient yourself to the historical date. Too often books don't take this care and they drive me crazy. This book has done it right.

This is a great read if you are interested in the history of physics and want to get an intimate feel for the life of a real genius.