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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
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$ 23.36
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$ 29.95 |
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| Item Number |
2416487 |
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Item Description...
Overview
Presents the life and accomplishments of one of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, contrasting his scientific work to his reserved personality and relationships with family and friends.
Publishers Description
Paul Dirac was among the great scientific geniuses of the modern age. One of the discoverers of quantum mechanics, the most revolutionary theory of the past century, his contributions had a unique insight, eloquence, clarity, and mathematical power. His prediction of antimatter was one of the greatest triumphs in the history of physics. One of Einstein’s most admired colleagues, Dirac was in 1933 the youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Dirac’s personality is legendary. He was an extraordinarily reserved loner, relentlessly literal-minded and appeared to have no empathy with most people. Yet he was a family man and was intensely loyal to his friends. His tastes in the arts ranged from Beethoven to Cher, from Rembrandt to Mickey Mouse. Based on previously undiscovered archives, The Strangest Man reveals the many facets of Dirac’s brilliantly original mind. A compelling human story, The Strangest Man also depicts a spectacularly exciting era in scientific history. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 539
Dimensions: Length: 1.5" Width: 6.25" Height: 9.25"
Weight: 1.8 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date Aug 25, 2009
ISBN 0465018270
EAN 9780465018277
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Availability 1 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 03:50.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Roseburg, OR.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | What did Dirac actually see? Feb 6, 2010 |
Dirac was undoubtedly a genius of the first order. This aspect of his life is clearly articulated by Graham Farmelo. Dr. Farmelo does a very good job of providing a highly readable and seldom dull tour of the development of quantum mechanics, the excitement that surrounded the beginnings of the nuclear age and the rarefied atmospheres of Cambridge, Gottingen and Princeton during the inter-War period. The snapshots of the contributors to this giant leap for mankind are memorable whether they be of the magisterial superman Bohr, the Soviet extrovert Kapitza or the slippery Heisenberg.
In addition to Dirac's roles in the emergence of quantum mechanics and particle physics, Dr. Farmelo describes Dirac's difficult and somewhat tortured personality largely through the eyes of his more normal colleagues, his cloying mother and his loving but challenging wife, Manci. The author sensitively details Dirac's decline and loss of creative power (relative to the complex problems he was trying to address) and his shift from creator to communicator albeit for a limited audience.
Despite being a well written, informative and highly readable biography, the Strangest Man left me puzzled and frustrated. I cannot help but think that the book could have been much, much better if Dr. Farmelo had devoted more space to actually laying out in more detail Dirac's major contributions to physics (perhaps at the expense of some of the more marginally revealing travelogues). I would have really liked to have understood what made Dirac's equations so powerful and so beautiful. How does someone who has a geometric view of physics write a book without diagrams? But perhaps I do not understand what Dr. Farmelo means by projective geometry.
"Dirac often remarked that he did not think about nature in terms of algebra, but by using visual images. Since he was a boy, he had been encouraged to develop visual imagination in his art and technical drawing classes, which were an ideal grounding for his studies of projective geometry...Five decades later, when he looked back on his early work in quantum mechanics, Dirac declared that he had used the ideas of projective geometry, unfamiliar to most of his physicist colleagues." (P130)
How Dirac "saw" quantum mechanics and atomic and sub-atomic particles is surely worth exploring in detail. The claim that Dirac's view was distinctive is made frequently but without the details and comparisons needed to support the claim. Dr. Farmelo's effort to address Dirac's thinking processes in the Dirac's Brain and Persona chapter is disappointing. Dr. Farmelo, not unreasonably, cautiously suggests that Dirac suffered from a form of autism or Asperger's syndrome. Alas his argument is vague and unpersuasive. Fundamentally, like many biographies of scientists, mathematicians and philosophers, the book suffers from a limited or vague exploration of how these amazing human beings actually think. In this case it is like writing the biography of a great novelist without examining what they wrote or how they came to write it. Sylvia Nasar's biography of the mathematician John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, is an example of an interesting but ultimately unsatisfying intellectual biography. I was expecting more insight than normal because Dr. Farmelo has a background in Dirac's field of physics and has written a relevant earlier book. It is unfortunate that he did not provide more of the "what" and the "how". In Dirac's case it is admittedly far more difficult than say for an extrovert and relatively prolific writer like Feynman - but without it we gain little insight into the essence of the Strange Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac.
These shortcomings notwithstanding, this is still an excellent and eloquent introduction to one of the quietest heroes of modern physics.
| | |  | Dirac --Strangest Man Feb 1, 2010 |
I'm two thirds into the book and am having a great time with it. I've always been curious to know more about PAM Dirac and this book is excellent in describing this character without appearing slanted. I recommend the book even for readers not normally interested in science or physics.
| | |  | a pity you can't buy the audio book version in my region Jan 30, 2010 |
| no doubt a great book, but unfortunately the audio book version is not sold in my geographical region (the netherlands). | | | | fascinating Dec 29, 2009 |
| I love biographies and this is one of the best I have read. I always read the bad reviews of books I buy or am thinking of buying. The few poor reviews of this book are full of holes. Who cares about a few editing errors when you are reading about a fascinating man who is so far from the rest of us that he is unfathomable without the aid of the author, and too long, I wish it had been longer. And as a math-challenged old lady, I was also fascinated by the fact that the author explained all the quantum stuff so that at least I had an inkling of what he did with his life. The author made everyone in the book human. Aren't we all a little bit two-sided? | | | | Genius Overpowers Autism Dec 13, 2009 |
This outstanding biography fills a need in two areas. Primarily as the biography of the physicist who (in my opinion) was second only to Einstein in the 20th century. Secondarily, as a study in Asperger's form of autism. There is one error that should be pointed out. Kitty Oppenheimer did not become an alcoholic at the time of her husband's security hearing (page 352). She was already an alcoholic during the war. She abandoned her husband and newborn baby at Los Alamos and moved to Santa Fe where she could do some serious drinking. Abraham Pais says of her, "I have found Kitty the most despicable female I have ever known." (A Tale of Two Continents, page 242)
The text has 438 pages but it is not a word too long. | | | Write your own review about The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom
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