Paul Dirac
1902–1984, Bristol, England, Tallahassee, USA
English physicist who unified quantum mechanics with special relativity and predicted the existence of antimatter.
In 1928 Dirac wrote down a relativistic wave equation for the electron (the Dirac equation), unifying quantum mechanics with special relativity and naturally incorporating electron spin into the theory. The equation had strange negative-energy solutions, which Dirac boldly interpreted as evidence for a new kind of particle — the electron's antiparticle (the positron) — experimentally confirmed in 1932 by Carl Anderson.
Nobel-winning work
Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Schrödinger 'for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory'. His 1928 relativistic wave equation for the electron — the Dirac equation — yielded electron spin automatically and predicted a positively charged counterpart, identified in 1932 with Anderson's positron. He also founded quantum electrodynamics (1927) and co-discovered Fermi–Dirac statistics (1926).
Workplaces: University of Cambridge
United Kingdom