Dirac Anecdotes
**Paul Dirac received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 at the age of 31. That proves his mettle and genius.
There are several interesting anecdotes related to Dirac. I’ve tried to capture a few of them. **
- Logic and precision Dirac was so unusual in the logic and precision of his interaction with the world, both in and out of physics, that legions of “Dirac stories” have become attached to him and have acquired a life of their own. Often these stories revolve around Dirac saying exactly what he meant and no more. Once when someone, making polite conversation at dinner, commented that it was windy, Dirac left the table and went to the door, looked out, returned to the table and replied that indeed it was windy. It has been said in jest that his spoken vocabulary consisted of “Yes”, “No”, and “I don’t know”.- Dirac on Dostoevski Once Peter Kapitza, the Russian physicist, gave Dirac an English translation of Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment. “Well, how do you like it?” asked Kapitza when Dirac returned the book. “It is nice,” said Dirac, “but in one of the chapters the author made a mistake. He describes the Sun rising twice on the same day.” This was his one and only comment on Dostoevski’s novel.- Clarity Dirac’s writing was famous for its clarity and simplicity. When Niels Bohr was writing a scientific paper - with many hesitations and redraftings, as was his custom, Bohr stopped: “I do not know how to finish this sentence.” Dirac replied: “I was taught at school that you should never start a sentence without knowing the end of it.” - It’s not a question At the quesiton period after a Dirac lecture at the University of Toronto, somebody in the audience remarked: “Professor Dirac, I do not understand how you derived the formula on the top left side of the blackboard.” “This is not a question,” snapped Dirac, “it is a statement. Next question, please.”