Dirac, P A M

Dirac, P(aul) A(drien) M(aurice)

(born Aug. 8, 1902, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.—died Oct. 20, 1984, Tallahassee, Fla., U.S.) English mathematician and theoretical physicist. His first major contribution (1925–26) was a general and logically simple form of quantum mechanics. About the same time, he developed ideas of Enrico Fermi, which led to the Fermi-Dirac statistics. He then applied Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity to the quantum mechanics of the electron and showed that the electron must have spin of ¹⁄₂. Dirac's theory also revealed new states later identified with the positron. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrödinger. In 1932 Dirac was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a chair once occupied by Isaac Newton. Dirac retired from Cambridge in 1969 and held a professorship at Florida State University from 1971 until his death.