Interview with Paul Dirac (1982) [video]

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27 points·privatdozent··4 comments

Paul Dirac was the subject of the BBC radio programme In Our Time in March 2020. In the programme, three academics discuss Dirac's life and work . It's a stimulating discussion, although I can't honestly say I fully understood some of the explanations! The episode can be downloaded for offline listening.

Near the end of the programme (around the 40 minute mark), the presenter, Melvyn Bragg, asks the guests: why is Dirac so unknown compared to Einstein, Schrödinger, Nils Bohr, etc?

One of the guests suggests that Dirac's abstract ideas are very difficult to explain to the general public. Einstein's theory of relativity is difficult to understand too, but over time popular science has attempted to explain it. In contrast, it is very hard to explain Dirac's ideas because of its reliance on mathematics and mathematical structures (even though Dirac's ideas underpin much of modern physics).

In Our Time: Paul Dirac:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fw0p

I love that there has been renewed interest in Paul Dirac. During the days of Oppenheimer, Pauli, Fermi, Einstein, etc. Dirac was and always was a physicist's physicist. He was a brilliant mathematician and I agree that his ideas are hard to understand as they require a deep understanding of math, thanks for providing that other link for further viewing.

The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo is a great biography of Dirac. Wholly recommended.

Dirac delta is a very important function in signal processing. His work was foundational for electrical engineering

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