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The Strangest Man
''The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius'' is a 2009 biography of quantum physicist Paul Dirac written by British physicist and author, Graham Farmelo, and published by Faber and Faber. The book won the Biography Award at the 2009 Costa Book Awards, and the 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. The title is based on a comment by physicist Niels Bohr four years before his death that of all the scientists who had visited his institute, Dirac was "the strangest man". Overview Farmelo charts Dirac's life from his upbringing in early 20th-century Bristol, through his years in Cambridge, Göttingen and Princeton University, Princeton up until his death in 1984, and that of his wife 18 years later. Throughout the book, Dirac's work and his unusual personality is explored, with his reservedness, apparent lack of empathy, and relentless literal-mindedness leading way to several humorous anecdotes. For example, when approached by two gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Farmelo
Graham Paul Farmelo (born 18 May 1953) is a biographer and science writer, a Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, U.K., and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, U.S.A. He is best known for his work on science communication and as the author of '' The Strangest Man'', a prize-winning biography of the theoretical physicist Paul Dirac. He lives in London. Writing Farmelo is author of 'The Universe Speaks in Numbers', published in May 2019. It explores the relationship between mathematics and the search for the laws of physics, and highlights the contributions of several theoretical physicists, natural philosophers and mathematicians, notably Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon Laplace, James Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac, before focussing on key developments on the mathematics-physics interface from the 1970s. Among the physicists and mathematicians whose work Farmelo discusses are Nima Arkani-Hamed, Michael Atiyah, Simon Donaldso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |