26 Jan

Paul Dirac: The Strangest Man

by The Thought Fox

It’s very rare for a science book to win the Costa (or Whitbread as it used to be) Biography Award, but that’s just what Graham Farmelo’s The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac has done this year. The Costa judges said, ‘The extraordinary mind and achievements of Britain’s Einstein are rendered here in the most compelling biography of the year.’ Just as significantly, the reviewers at Physics World named it their book of the year for 2009, though they stressed that you don’t need to be a professional physicist, academic or boffin to understand it and enjoy it. That’s one of the skills of a great biographer – to make a subject available beyond its core audience.

Paul Dirac was one of the pioneers of quantum physics, perhaps the greatest theoretical physicist since Isaac Newton, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. Yet little was known about him – his genius went largely unrecognised – largely because of Dirac’s reticence.

Graham Farmelo’s book is a welcome reminder – or an introduction – to an icon of modern thought. Our interview with Farmelo (recorded in January last year) is well worth a listen.

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