

Quantum Mechanics: Ph.D Thesis of Paul Dirac - duggieawesome
http://www.academia.edu/323246/PhD_Thesis_of_Paul_Dirac

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ColinWright
See also:

Paul Dirac's handwritten notes for his PhD, the first ever on quantum
mechanics.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173)

~~~
chm
> "the first ever on quantum mechanics"

Well that's a statement.

~~~
ramidarigaz
I guess that's Dirac for you. Unbelievably brilliant.

~~~
chm
There were others before Dirac, that was my point.

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stared
Being in the topic of Paul Dirac, there is a wonderful biography - __The
Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius __, by Graham
Farmelo.

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](http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mkotowsk/reviews/3farmelo.html))

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uween
I think these are just his notes on his thesis, rather than his actual thesis.
I don't know what the source is, but this same document was posted on HN as
his `handwritten notes for his Ph.D'
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6002173)).

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!

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ivan_ah
> You must be logged in to download

I have said it before and I will say it again, because it needs to be said:

    
    
       F U Richard!
    

(for making people log in to access content)

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.

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auctiontheory
So smart at physics, yet he never figured out LaTeX.

~~~
cupcake-unicorn
Haha, wow, I found myself having that kneejerk reaction as well. "Gosh, this
looks so unprofessional, like a paper from middle school..."

~~~
RyanZAG
It's from a time when academics (physics at least) was less interested in
appearance and more interested in results. It's why there were so many
breakthroughs. Today that has shifted with physics being more of a fashion
contest to get funding.

~~~
bnegreve
This may be true but this is surely a bad example: Dirac's thesis is about
Quantum Mechanics which is also one of the most fashioned research topics
these days. So it's either a "result" or just a "fashioned topic" but it
cannot be both at the same time.

On a side note, I wouldn't call (La)TeX a fashioned tool that scientists use
to impress other people and get funding.

