I once started a physics degree at Bristol, where Dirac was born and raised, and the department made a big show of 'their' man. The house he grew up in is a few minutes' walk from the department, and has a blue plaque indicating its status. It was some years before I discovered that Dirac had never been in the physics department at all, but in fact studied electrical engineering, before entering Cambridge, where he flourished as a physicist.
One of the finer points of that book is that it is a biography of Dirac's life, not just a description of his insights into physics. His personal life was unhappy and makes for rather depressing reading. When Feynman was described as a second Dirac, only this time human, it is difficult to appreciate fully just how fundamentally different the personalities of the two geniuses were.
Between studying electrical engineering and going to Cambridge he also earned a degree in mathematics, if I recall correctly. He was not given a sufficiently large scholarship the first time he was accepted to Cambridge, and so he had to wait.
I believe Bristol didn't have a Physics lab until the late 1920s after Dirac's time. Dirac actually had two undergrad degrees from Bristol, the first in Electrical Engineering and the second in Mathematics.
Comments
I recommend Graham Farmelo's 2009 biography of Dirac, The Strangest Man.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/apr/02/paul-dirac-str...
I once started a physics degree at Bristol, where Dirac was born and raised, and the department made a big show of 'their' man. The house he grew up in is a few minutes' walk from the department, and has a blue plaque indicating its status. It was some years before I discovered that Dirac had never been in the physics department at all, but in fact studied electrical engineering, before entering Cambridge, where he flourished as a physicist.
One of the finer points of that book is that it is a biography of Dirac's life, not just a description of his insights into physics. His personal life was unhappy and makes for rather depressing reading. When Feynman was described as a second Dirac, only this time human, it is difficult to appreciate fully just how fundamentally different the personalities of the two geniuses were.
Between studying electrical engineering and going to Cambridge he also earned a degree in mathematics, if I recall correctly. He was not given a sufficiently large scholarship the first time he was accepted to Cambridge, and so he had to wait.
I believe Bristol didn't have a Physics lab until the late 1920s after Dirac's time. Dirac actually had two undergrad degrees from Bristol, the first in Electrical Engineering and the second in Mathematics.