Paul A.M. Dirac

Paul Dirac OM FRS
Dirac, photographed in 1933
Born	Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-08-08)8 August 1902 Bristol, England
Died	20 October 1984(1984-10-20) (aged 82) Tallahassee, Florida, US
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	Swiss (1902–19) British (1919–84)
Alma mater	University of Bristol St John's College, Cambridge
Known for	Dirac equation Dirac comb Dirac delta function Fermi–Dirac statistics Fermi–Dirac integral Complete Fermi–Dirac integral Dirac sea Dirac bracket Dirac spinor Dirac picture Dirac measure Dirac monopole Dirac notation Dirac adjoint Dirac large numbers hypothesis Dirac fermion Dirac field Dirac hole theory Dirac spectrum Dirac string Dirac algebra Dirac matrices Dirac operator Dirac constant Dirac's theorem on Hamiltonian cycles Dirac's theorem on cycles in k-connected graphs Kapitsa–Dirac effect Dirac–von Neumann axioms Abraham–Lorentz–Dirac force Dirac-Coulomb-Breit Equation Einstein–Maxwell–Dirac equations Canonical quantisation Canonical quantum gravity Exchange interaction First class constraint Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics Negative probability Path integral formulation Primary constraint Quantum electrodynamics Spin magnetic moment Virtual particle List of things named after Paul Dirac
Awards	Nobel Prize in Physics (1933) Royal Medal (1939) Copley Medal (1952) Max Planck Medal (1952) Fellow of the Royal Society (1930)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics (theoretical)
Institutions	University of Cambridge University of Miami Florida State University
Doctoral advisor	Ralph Fowler
Doctoral students	Homi Bhabha Harish Chandra Mehta Dennis Sciama Fred Hoyle Behram Kurşunoğlu John Polkinghorne
Influences	John Stuart Mill

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac OM FRS (/dɪˈræk/; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, a member of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, and spent the last decade of his life at Florida State University.

Among other discoveries, he formulated the Dirac equation which describes the behaviour of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter. Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". He also made significant contributions to the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics.

Dirac was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character. In a 1926 letter to Paul Ehrenfest, Albert Einstein wrote of Dirac, "This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful".