

Paul Dirac's handwritten notes for his PhD, the first ever on quantum mechanics - ColinWright
http://academia.edu/323246/PhD_Thesis_of_Paul_Dirac

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keithflower
_"...Dirac was absorbed in writing his Ph.D. thesis, a compact presentation of
his vision of quantum mechanics. Confident though he was of his understanding
of the theory, he knew as he wrote his thesis that it was not the whole story,
for he had recently heard than an alternative version of quantum theory had
appeared, one that completely different from Heisenberg's. The author of the
new version was the Austrian theoretician Erwin Schrodinger, working in
Zürich. He was 38 years old, a generation older then than Heisenberg and
Dirac, with a formidable reputation in Europe as a brilliant polymath.

Dirac ignored Schrodinger's theory in his PhD thesis "Quantum Mechanics", the
first to be submitted anywhere on the subject. The thesis was a great success
with his examiners who took the unusual step on 19 June of sending him a short
hand written letter congratulating him on the "exceptional distinction" of his
work.

....Dirac disliked celebrations and formality, so he was almost certainly not
looking forward to the ceremony. He could have taken the degree without
attending it but decided to be there in person for the sake of his proud
parents, especially this father, who had given him the money that enabled him
to begin his Cambridge studies.

...Wearing evening dress with a white bow tie, a small black cap and black
silk down with a scarlet-lined hood, he knelt on a velvet cushion, placed his
hands together and held them out to be grasped by the Vice Chancellor, who
delivered a prayer-like oration. Dirac arose, a doctor.

Like his father, he had no need of holidays – the long vacations were not for
relaxing but for hard work. The university was about to hibernate for the
summer and would be virtually devoid of social distractions for the few
scholars remaining. It was the perfect environment for Dirac to concentrate
even more intensively on his work. Heisenberg and Schrodinger had knifed a
sack of gemstones, and the race was on to pick out the diamonds._

\-- Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man

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nrmn
Here is a link to the pdf to save anyone from the signup process. Which was
painfully long and annoying.

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155545/dirac_1926_disser...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/155545/dirac_1926_dissertation.pdf)

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RVijay007
Looks like your link is so popular that Dropbox has temporarily disabled it!

~~~
nrmn
Yea, dropbox has a 20gb limit on public downloads so the file being ~28mbs
means its been downloaded around 700 times.

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Osmium
There's nothing like looking at that Table of Contents to put your own PhD in
perspective!

~~~
hga
Indeed, although some of this is the luck of timing. E.g. Richard Feynman
would likely have been one of the great names in quantum mechanics ... if it
weren't for the fact he was 8 years old right then. Linus Pauling, born 17
years earlier, became the 20th century's most preeminent chemist in part
because he was a fricking genius and writer (many of his books are still
useful today), but key was that also in 1926 he got a Guggenheim Fellowship to
study under some European physicists like Bohr and Schrödinger for a couple of
years, and was therefore one of the first to apply quantum mechanics to
chemistry, a _very_ fruitful approach.

~~~
dnautics
Wait, Feynman wasn't one of the "great names in quantum mechanics"??

~~~
cli
Feyman was too young for the really fundamental work on quantum mechanics. He
won his Nobel prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics. However, he
created the path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics, which can be
thought of as another way of describing quantum mechanics.

~~~
abecedarius
It's worth mentioning that the path-integral formulation had a seed in Dirac:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_integral_formulation)

------
Aqueous
'Quantum Mechanics by Paul Dirac'

Other historical theses:

1\. 'Gravity by Newton'

2\. 'Evolution by Darwin'

3\. 'The Earth Orbits the Sun, Not the Other Way Around by Copernicus'

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JosephRedfern
"The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac" is a good read if your
interested in learning more about Dirac's life.

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gtani
I asked my Dad about Dirac, he never met him but he once wrote him asking for
clarification of something in a book, and got a handwritten letter back. He
doesn't actually remember what was in the letter, but he does remember that
somebody borrowed the letter and never returned it. Pissed him off, so we're
going to try to get it back.

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twentysix
[http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/34/str...](http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/34/streaming_80_6.html)

[http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/35/str...](http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/35/streaming_80_7.html)

[http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/36/str...](http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/bitstream/1813/80/36/streaming_80_8.html)

These three lectures by Hans Bethe are really interesting to watch and gives
you a historical perspective on the development of Quantum Physics. Given his
age, the delivery is a bit slow, but it piques your interest in the subject.

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geraldalewis
That is the most beautiful handwriting I have ever seen.

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baggers
Very nice! \------ I'll throw another link into the pile. A 54min lecture on
the life of Paul Dirac.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfYon2WdR40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfYon2WdR40)
The lecturer is very engaging and this a very approachable talk for those not
versed in physics.

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newobj
Dirac went to FSU? Wha???

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Little_Peter
Yes, he went to Florida State University in the dawn of his career. This
explains the watermark.

~~~
Panoramix
Indeed, he went to Bristol and Cambridge, whence he developed his relativistic
quantum theory.

He relocated to Florida towards the end of his life.

*edited the part where I assert OP was wrong.

~~~
Little_Peter
We are splitting hairs here. What is wrong? That his career dawned in Florida?

~~~
gruseom
In English, "dawn" only occurs in the morning, so when used metaphorically it
always refers to the advent of a thing. The word you're looking for is
"twilight", which when used metaphorically means the end or decline of a
thing. Thus Nietzsche's _Götzen-Dämmerung_ is translated _Twilight of the
Idols_.

There's also the word "dusk", which is the opposite of "dawn", but it tends
not to be used metaphorically.

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dmead
so many threads on hacker news get voted to the top without any comments at
all. usually you're supposed to read the article, but in this case i doubt
anyone is really capable of understanding it. so in conclusion, aside from
this one the article has the appropriate number of comments.

~~~
gaze
this is all very standard stuff for a physicist. Any first or second year grad
student should have an easy time digesting this.

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logicallee
"Pshaw, even the most dimwitted individual should understand this, provided
they have a BS in physics, were accepted to grad school, and are in their
first or second year."

~~~
pja
Nah, this is undergrad physics these days. 3rd or 4th year undergrad physics
admittedly :)

~~~
gaze
Relativistic quantum mechanics typically isn't covered during undergrad. Maybe
touched on briefly.

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tfgg
I don't know what university you went to, but it definitely was on my course.
Second or third year. The idea that you wouldn't cover relativistic QM in
undergrad physics is pretty absurd, and probably indicative of how shallow
American undergrad degrees are.

~~~
sanderjd
Defensive American undergraduate educated anecdote: my degree was in computer
science and I studied this third year. Can't speak for anybody else.

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pja
Computational QM is a thing these days :)

~~~
sanderjd
Yep, didn't mean to suggest the course is irrelevant to computer scientists. I
meant to imply that if they're teaching it to CS students third year,
presumably physics students are learning it earlier and/or in more depth.

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kirk21
Wow! This must have been a lot of work to write this all down.

We are creating tools for PhD students so they can work more efficiently.
bohr.launchrock.com

~~~
gjm11
Please stop spamming HN with advertisements for this. You have posted 9 of
these, generally with only the most tenuous relevance to the thread in which
you have done so. In one case you appear to have been trying to pretend not to
be affiliated with the company in question. Please stop.

