Paul Dirac
Predicted antimatter and formulated Dirac equation
Most quoted
"The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble. It is the purpose of theoretical physics to show that it is possible to derive, from these equations, the properties of the actual world."
— from Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1929
"The methods of progress in theoretical physics have undergone a vast change during the present century. The classical tradition has been to consider the world to be an association of observable objects (particles, fluids, fields, etc.) moving about according to definite laws of force, so that one could form a mental picture in space and time of the whole scheme."
— from Quantised Singularities in the Electromagnetic Field, 1931
"The most powerful method of advance that can be suggested at present is to employ all the resources of pure mathematics in attempts to perfect and generalise the mathematical formalism that forms the existing basis of theoretical physics, and after each success in this direction, to try to interpret the new mathematical features in terms of physical entities."
— from Quantised Singularities in the Electromagnetic Field, 1931
All quotes by Paul Dirac (692)
The steady progress of physics requires for its theoretical formulation a mathematics that gets continually more advanced.
The physicist, in his study of natural phenomena, has two methods of making progress: (1) the method of experiment and observation, and (2) the method of mathematical reasoning.
The most important of the new ideas was, of course, that of the quantum.
The whole of physical chemistry could be deduced from the laws of quantum mechanics.
I think it's a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do.
The fundamental laws of nature are simple, but they are expressed in the language of mathematics.
In the case of electrodynamics, the field is all-important, and the particle is only a minor, secondary phenomenon.
The question of whether we shall ever be able to understand the electron is perhaps too ambitious. We should first try to understand the proton.
The origin of the magnetic moment of the electron is unknown.
The difficulties in the way of interpreting the negative-energy solutions of my equation were solved by the hole theory.
I have spent many years searching for a Hamiltonian to bring into the theory and have not found it.
The development of physics has shown that at each stage we can devise a mathematical formalism which describes the observed phenomena, but we cannot guarantee that this formalism will continue to describe new phenomena successfully.
Contemporaries of Paul Dirac
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Paul Dirac (1902–1984).