Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, he is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Brunel University. His books include 'Breakthrough,' 'The Ascent of Gravity,' which was the Sunday Times 2017 Science Book of the Year; 'Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand', 'What A Wonderful World', 'Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You,' 'We Need to Talk About Kelvin,' and 'Afterglow of Creation,' both of which were runners-up for the Royal Society Book Prize. Marcus has also won the Bookseller's Digital Innovation of the Year for 'Solar System for iPad.'
British theoretical physicist Paul Dirac was one of the most significant figures in the early days of quantum physics, who along with Erwin Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1933. But it was in 1927 that this quiet, but brilliant mind set to work looking for"pretty mathematics," and in doing so formulated what would become one of his greatest achievements — the Dirac equation.
The problem with the Schrödinger equation is that it does not incorporate the other revolution of twentieth-century physics. In his special theory of relativity of 1905, Einstein showed that strange things happen to space and time as a body with mass approaches the speed of light.
It was while looking for"pretty mathematics" in his spartan rooms at St. John's College in late November 1927 that Dirac literally plucked from thin air what would become known as the Dirac equation. Today, it is one of two equations inscribed on flagstones on the floor of London's Westminster Abbey. The other is Stephen Hawking's equation for the temperature of a black hole.
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