Reviews

• 人間Dirac

  この本は、Diracの人生の詳細を伝えてくれるおそらく初めての本です。天才Diracの生き方に興味のある人には是非一読をお勧めします。電子の相対論的波動方程式を知る人には、Diracの天才は疑いのないものです。その彼が、晩年Cambridgeでは華々しい存在ではなかったというのは、さびしい話ですが、彼の関心が常に物理法則の基本的な部分に集中していたのが、その一因かもしれません。 彼の風変わりな性格を表すエピソードは多く伝えられています。一方では、癒しがたいトラウマを抱えた人生であったようです。私から見れば、彼は繊細で、純粋な人間です。彼は、人生の問題をすべて科学的に理解しようとしました。彼の会話の妙は多くこれで理解できます。必然的に彼は神を信じません。しかし彼は、人類が永遠に存在し続けることを信じました。これは科学を超えています。私はここに、人間としてのDiracを見ることができるような気がします。

• 非エリート的天才

  父親スイス人母親イギリス人ですが、幼いころ父親はフランス語で母親は英語を話していたので、 父と母は違う言語を話すものと思っていたようです。特異なパーソナリティーを持つ、 ディラックの人生を語りながら創成期の量子力学から現代の素粒子論、超弦理論までを解説している。 世界恐慌を経て、ケンブリッジでの友、ロシア人カピッツァとスターリンのソ連の関係、 ハイゼンベルグ、シュレジンガー、ボルン、ボーアとナチスとの関係など興味深い。ディラックと教皇のかかわり、 神に対する考え、神は高度な数学を知っているともいっていたようです。 自然の究極の原理はシンプルで美しい方程式であらわされるという信念をもっていた。 女性には興味がないと思われていたディラックのマンシーとの出会いと結婚、 家族の悲劇的死、晩年のアメリカ生活と 副題のThe HIddenn life of Quantum geniusどうりの魅力的読み物でした。

• Masterfully writing biography of a brilliant Physicist & the father of Matrix Mechanics. Outside the Physics community, few people heard much about PAM Dirac; other than the likes of Einstein & Feynman. Rightly quoted, somewhere in the book, "unsung hero of 20th century physics...."

• Bibliografia molto dettagliata, di Paul Dirac, uno dei più grandi fisici del XX secolo. Lo stile di scrittura è molto gradevole, brillante e scorrevole anche se ci sono molti vocaboli inusuali e\o slang per chi non è di madrelingua inglese, ma il traduttore Kindle spesso aiuta e la lettura procede in genere senza intoppi. Essendo una bibliografia, le opere di Dirac non sono spiegate sotto il profilo scientifico: ciò sarà apprezzato dal lettore non tecnico ma può deludere chi ha curiosità per la fisica dei quanti. La storia di Dirac è molto interessante sia per gli aspetti scientifici (un genio assoluto!) che sotto quelli umani e psicologici (una personalità estremamente singolare, ai confini con l'autismo almeno fino al raggiungimento della fama, ma anche abile oratore e scrittore e comunque sempre capace di coltivare amicizie profonde e durature). Coinvolgente anche il background storico: si percorre tutto il novecento, dalla prima guerra mondiale all'era di Bush padre. Parecchi gli spunti umoristici (mi ha divertito l'episodio in cui chiede ad Heisenberg come capire se una ragazza è carina...). Comunista fervente che però combatte per la "liberazione" di Kapitza. Solitario e taciturno ma amante delle passeggiate e dei viaggi. Molto "triste" la sua lunga parabola discendente di fisico iniziata subito dopo il Nobel a soli 31 anni, corrispondente però ad una qualità della vita in decisa ascesa. Bello: se vi piace il genere non esitate a comprarlo per poco più di due euro...

• This is a beautiful book. Anyone who studies quantum physics is bound to come across Dirac's work. I was intrigued by the fact that he is not as well known as the other pioneers in this field although his contributions are unmistakably profound and wide ranging. This book more than satisfied my need to know more about him. It is well written, well organised and very comprehensive. It is unbiased in the treatment of its subject. Being a psychiatrist, I fully agree with the author that Dirac suffered from Asperger's syndrome, an autistic disorder. I recommend this book without any reservations to anyone interested in knowing more about this great scientist.

• Absolut grossartiges Buch, weil es einerseits das Leben von Paul Dirac und seinen Angehörigen beschreibt und parallel dazu die Entwicklung der Quantenphysik mit all ihren Protagonisten aufzeigt.

• Farmelo lays a good foundation explaining the status of physics in Dirac's youth. Einstein had just published relativity and the start of quantum theory had begun. Dirac's lifelong work was to combine the two new ideas. He succeeded in starting without completing it. It still has not been completed. Each chapter starts with a pertinent quote. Interesting. Explains Dirac's education in engineering and how that gave him a different viewpoint. Details his difficult childhood and his relationship with his family. Covers his marriage and family life. Notes that he probably suffered from a form of autism. Relates his connections with other physicists, Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, Born, Oppenheimer, Ehrenfest, etc. I found this revealing since Dirac did not express his feelings easily, but Farmelo relates situations that demonstrates Dirac's deep concern for others. One theme of Dirac's life was his long time interest in international communism. Peter Kapitza was a Russian physicist who worked Dirac and Rutherford at the cavendish lab in England. Kapitza was a communist, as were various others in England at that time. He seems to have converted Dirac. Dirac was always loyal to Kapitza, as well as to all his friends. This is another theme throughout Dirac's life, loyalty to others. It seems to me, that Dirac's love of beautiful theories, which allowed him to find hidden truth in physics, led him to hope that the beautiful promises of communism would reveal hidden social truth. Dirac's commitment to mathematical beauty was profound. Page 74 . . . "This fascination with the nature of beauty had powerful resonances for him. Like many theoreticians, he had been moved by the sheer sensual pleasure of working with Einstein's theories of relativity and Maxwells theory. For him and his colleagues, the theories were just as beautiful as Mozart's Jupiter symphony, a Rembrandt self portrait or a Milton sonnet. The beauty of a fundamental theory and physics has several characteristics in common with a great work of art: fundamental simplicity, inevitability, power and grandeur. . . From a few clearly stated principles, Einstein had built a mathematical structure whose explanatory power would be ruined if any of its principles were changed. Abandoning is usual modesty, he described his theory as incomparably beautiful." Page 401: "In June 1971, he had startled his audience at the Lindau meeting by considering "Is there a God" to be one of the five most important questions in contemporary physics. He said it would be useful to approach the question scientifically: “A physicist would need to make this question precise by understanding what is meant to a universe with a God and what is a universe without a God, having a clear distinction between the two types of universes, and then looking at the actual universe and seeing which class it belongs to. . . He said if future scientists demonstrated that the creation of life is overwhelmingly unlikely, then, in his opinion, this would be evidence for the existence of God. . . Dirac was taken to task by the press for these speculations but was not to be deflected and often returned to the topic, in public and in private." Fascinating insight. Reminds me that Gödel, another famous mathematician, believed he demonstrated a proof that god exists. One aspect of this biography I liked was Farmelo's careful description of Dirac's thinking at each part of his life. He does not try to impose a false consistency where none existed. No one is the same from youth to old age. This work does an outstanding job in showing the development of Dirac's thinking and personality. He also shows the development of quantum theory in a way that the general reader can easily grasp. One example is Dirac's atheism. As a young man he was openly atheistic. As years went by his thinking changed. Page 377 . . . "Dirac suggested to his readers that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and he used a very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe. . . In his positivistic youth, Dirac would have regarded the link as unverifiable and therefore meaningless, but he had changed his tune." Well written. Easy to follow. Credible. Lots of use of original sources. 438 pages. Very good account of the development of the early years of quantum theory (a theory that has rocked our civilization) and the men who created it. Dirac is almost to quantum theory what Einstein is to gravity and Maxwell to electromagnetism. He deserves more appreciation than he receives. Perhaps his unconventional faith in mathematical beauty and the source of mathematical beauty has hindered his reputation. Extensive notes (800?) Wow! About 250 references in bibliography. Amazing! Twenty-three b/w photographs Exhaustive twenty-three page index. Marvelous!

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