Quantum Mechanics: Ph.D Thesis of Paul Dirac
academia.edu
academia.edu
Paul Dirac's handwritten notes for his PhD, the first ever on quantum mechanics.
Well that's a statement.
It is an exceptionally well-written biography of one of the greatest physicists, and a rare combination of a page-turner and a book written with the English reserve.
Besides the history of an important part of physics, and its historical background (including the rise of Nazism and Stalinism, WWII and later - Cold War) one can clearly see that science is not a dry product, polished from its very beginning. It's a process, created by various people, of different personalities and views, having simple and genial ideas, making blunt mistakes, and having life besides science (even Dirac).
Also, it shows science (here: physics) as a sociological process, with its centre shifting from Cambridge (centred around E. Rutherford), Copenhagen and Gottingen to Princeton, Moscow, ...
When it comes to Dirac himself - it's a moving example of a person, who may look as cold and devoid of emotions, but in fact is a loving father, loyal friend (defending the imprisoned (P. Kapitza), and excluded (W. Heisenberg)) and a responsible man. And one, who had never became reconciled with his brother's suicide.
The biography leaves a little doubt when it comes to Paul Dirac's autism, or Asperger's syndrome. While introversion, withdrawal, reticence, and persistence may stem from different causes, being literal-minded, characteristic response to stimuli and poor insight into other minds are, IMHO, hard to interpret in any other way.
(And a nicer review by one of my friends: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mkotowsk/reviews/3farmelo.html)
It's incomplete, full of corrections and deletions and covered in notes that are not referenced in the text.
Cambridge keeps a copy of theses submitted since 1920, so they should have a hardcopy of the real thing somewhere, but I wouldn't have thought it had been digitised. How fantastic it would be if they did though!
I have said it before and I will say it again, because it needs to be said:
F U Richard!
UPDATE: On a more constructive note --- @RichardPrice, if you remove the "you must login to access" barrier, I pledge to upload all my papers to your website and I will even promote it.
On a side note, I wouldn't call (La)TeX a fashioned tool that scientists use to impress other people and get funding.