Paul Dirac was an English physicist and influential scientist of the 20th century.
He was renowned for his role in the advancement of quantum electrodynamics and the quantum theory of mechanics. For his contributions to atomic theory, Paul earned a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 and shared the honor with Erwin Schrödinger.
The title of Paul Dirac's final essay was 'The Inadequacies Of Quantum Field Theory', which he wrote in 1984. He was a teacher of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1932-1969.
Interesting Paul Dirac Quotes
(Check out these interesting Paul Dirac quotes.)
Paul Dirac's full name was Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac.
"A great deal of my work is just playing with equations and seeing what they give."
"The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination."
“The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.”
"It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions."
"It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress."
"The shortage of buyers, which the world is suffering from, is readily understood, not as due to people not wishing to obtain possession of goods, but as people being unwilling to part with something which might earn a regular income in exchange for those goods."
"If we are honest - and scientists have to be - we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality."
“I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it.”
"If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them."
Paul Dirac Quotes About Mathematics
(Paul Dirac's quotes focus on mathematics too.)
Mathematics was another aspect of Paul Dirac through which he used to motivate people.
"Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power in this field."
"It is simply a search for pretty mathematics. It may turn out later that the work does have an application. Then one has had good luck."
“If there is a God, he’s a great mathematician.”
"God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe."
"It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it."
"It has led me along an unexpected path, a path where new vistas open up, a path leading to new territory, where one can set up a base of operations, from which one can survey the surroundings and plan future progress."
- 'The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life Of Paul Dirac, Mystic Of The Atom', 2009, Graham Farmelo.
“A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.”
"The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a large part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known, and the difficulty is only that the exact application of these laws leads to equations much too complicated to be soluble."
“Mathematics is only a tool and one should learn to hold the physical ideas in one's mind without reference to the mathematical form.”
"God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.”
"I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics."
"If you are receptive and humble, mathematics will lead you by the hand. Again and again, when I have been at a loss how to proceed, I have just had to wait until I have felt the mathematics led me by the hand."
"As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen."
Paul Dirac Quotes About Quantum Mechanics
This quote list is centered on quantum mechanics.
“Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics.”
"The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dealt with by many authors, and I do not want to discuss it here. I want to deal with more fundamental things."
"It seems clear that the present quantum mechanics is not in its final form."
- 'The Early Years Of Relativity', 'Albert Einstein: Historical And Cultural Perspectives: The Centennial Symposium In Jerusalem', 1979, Gerald James Holton and Yehuda Elkana.
"Approximate practical methods of applying quantum mechanics should be developed, which can lead to an explanation of the main features of complex atomic systems without too much computation."
Inspiring Paul Dirac Quotes
Below are the inspiring quotes by Paul Dirac.
"The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers."
“People who equate all the different kinds of human activity to money are taking too primitive a view of things.”
"If there is no complete agreement between the results of one's work and the experiment, one should not allow oneself to be too discouraged."
-'The Evolution Of The Physicist's Picture Of Nature', Scientific American, May 1963.
“It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.”
"I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition."
“Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence.”
"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.''
"Hopes are always accompanied by fears, and, in scientific research, the fears are liable to become dominant."
“Living is worthwhile if one can contribute in some small way to this endless chain of progress.”
"The measure of greatness in a scientific idea is the extent to which it stimulates thought and opens up new lines of research."
"Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.”
"I should like to suggest to you that the cause of all the economic troubles is that we have an economic system which tries to maintain an equality of value between two things, which it would be better to recognise from the beginning as of unequal value."
"What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as to why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and all the other horrors He might have prevented."
“A termination of one's life is necessary in the scheme of things to provide a logical reason for unselfishness. . . . The fact that there is an end to one's life compels one to take an interest in things that will continue to live after one is dead.”
