The Strangest Man

by Graham Farmelo

  7 See the article on Roundy in the Wisconsin State Journal on the day after his death, on 10 December 1971.

  8 The article is reproduced in its entirety in Kragh (1990: 72–3). The original is in Dirac Papers, 2/30/1 (FSU).

  9 A check of the microfilm records of the Wisconsin State Journal reveals that the article was not published between 1 April and 29 May 1929 (the microfilm for 30 May is missing).

  10 Van Vleck (1972: 7–16; see pp. 10–11).

  11 Record of Dirac’s payment as ‘Lecturer in physics April and May 1929’ is in WISC. Early in his stay, from 10–16 April, Dirac had spent almost a week based at the University of Iowa.

  12 Dirac left Madison on 27 May and travelled to the Grand Canyon via Minneapolis, Kansas City and Winslow, Arizona.

  13 Quoted in Brown and Rechenberg (1987: 134). This article gives much detail about Dirac and Heisenberg’s preparations for their 1929 trip and the trip itself.

  14 Mehra (1973: 816).

  15 Brown and Rechenberg (1987: 136–7).

  16 Interview with Leopold Halpern, 18 February 2003.

  17 Brown and Rechenberg (1987: 139–41).

  18 Heisenberg returned from the 1929 trip to be the best ping-pong player in the quantum community: interview with von Weiszächer, AHQP, 9 July 1963, p. 11.

  19 Mehra (1973: 816).

  20 Mehra (1972: 17–59).

  21 The jako was commonly used to scent clothes in Japan at that time. Hearn (1896: 31n).

  22 Dirac gives his timetable in his letter to Tamm on 12 September 1929, Kojevnikov (1993: 29); Brendon (2000: 234).

  23 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 6 July 1929, Dirac Papers, 1/3/11 (FSU).

  24 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 6 May 1929, Dirac Papers, 1/3/10 (FSU).

  25 Postcards from Dirac to his parents, autumn 1929, DDOCS.

  26 Interview with Oppenheimer, 20 November 1963, p. 23 (AHQP).

  27 Fitzgerald (1931: 459).

  28 Dirac (1977: 144).

  29 Kojevnikov (2004: 56–9).

  30 Pais, A. (1998: 36).

  31 Letter from Dirac to Bohr, 9 December 1929, NBA.

  32 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 11 October 1929, Dirac Papers, 1/3/10 (FSU). The spelling is the one used by Flo Dirac. Dirac expected to arrive home on 19 December (postcard from Dirac to his parents, 27 November 1929, DDOCS).

  33 Letter from Dirac to Manci, 26 February 1936 (DDOCS).

  Chapter fourteen

  1 Cavendish Laboratory Archive, UCAM. The poem was apparently written as a Valentine’s card to the electron.

  2 Dirac, ‘Symmetry in the Atomic World’, January 1955. The draft, which features this analogy, is in Dirac Papers, 2/27/13 (FSU).

  3 Cited in Kragh (1990: 101).

  4 Gamow (1970: 70); letter from Dirac to Tamm, 20 March 1930, in Kojevnikov (1993: 39).

  5 On Saturday, 16 February 1935, Van Vleck took D to ‘A Disney Day’ at a cinema in Boston. The documents, marked with Van Vleck’s comment ‘Dirac loved Mickey Mouse’, are in the Van Vleck papers at AMS.

  6 Dirac’s formula is n = – log2 [log2 (2√(√…√2))], where the ellipsis (…) denotes the taking of n square roots. The story is related in Casimir (1984: 74–5), where the author asserts that Dirac killed the game using only three 2s. Each symbol in the formula is very common in mathematics, so Dirac’s solution is within the rules of the game.

  7 Postcard from Dirac to his parents, 20 February 1930 (DDOCS).

  8 Telegram to Dirac from his mother, 22 February 1930, Dirac Papers, 1/3/12 (FSU).

  9 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 24 February 1930, Dirac Papers, 1/3/12 (FSU).

  10 The certificate of Dirac’s election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society is available on the Society’s website. The names of the 447 Fellows of the Society on 31 December 1929 are given in the Yearbook of the Royal Society 1931.

  11 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 24 February 1930, Dirac Papers, 1/3/12 (FSU).

  12 Letter from Hassé to Dirac, 28 February 1930, Dirac Papers, 2/2/1 (FSU).

  13 Letter from Arnold Hitchings to the Bristol Evening Post, 14 December 1979.

  14 In 1935, Dirac traded in this car. Dirac Papers, 1/8/2 (FSU).

  15 Interview with John Crook, 1 May 2003.

  16 Mott (1986: 42).

  17 Dirac was well known for this practice. It is described explicitly by his climbing tutor Tamm in the course of the letter to his wife on 27 May 1931, Kojevnikov (1993: 55). See also Mott (1972: 2).

  18 Interview with Monica Dirac, 7 February 2003; see also M. Dirac (2003: 42).

  19 Letter from Taylor Sen (1986: 80). Howarth (1978: 104).

  20 See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1930, Manchester Guardian, 12–18 February 1930.

  21 Peierls (1987: 36).

  22 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 12 June 1930, Dirac Papers, 1/3/12 (FSU).

  23 Kojevnikov (1993: 40), note on letter from Dirac to Tamm, 6 July 1930.

  24 The Guardian, ‘World Conference of Scientists’, 3 September 1930. Crowther was probably the author of this report.

  25 Ross (1962).

  26 The venue and the time of the talk are in the records of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, BOD.

  27 Delbrück (1972: 280–1).

  28 The report of the Science News Service is in Dirac Papers, 2/26/8 (FSU).

  29 New York Times, 10 September 1932.

  30 I have translated the German word quatsch as ‘crap’. Another, similar version of this anecdote is given in the interview with Guido Beck, AHQP, 22 April 1967, p. 23.

  31 Among the most able students who were dissatisfied by Dirac’s talks was Freeman Dyson, who recalls: ‘I read Dirac’s book hoping to learn quantum mechanics from it, and found it totally unsatisfactory.’ E-mail from Dyson, 19 August 2006.

  32 Nature, Vol. 127, 9 May 1931, p. 699.

  33 Pauli’s review is in Kronig and Weisskopf (1964: 1,397–8).

  34 Einstein (1931: 73).

  35 Leisure reading anecdote: Woolf (1980: 261); ‘Where’s my Dirac?’ anecdote is from Tallahasse Democrat, 29 November 1970.

  36 Hoyle (1994: 238).

  37 Freeman (1991: 136–7).

  38 Quoted in Charap (1972: 331).

  39 Letter from Tamm to Dirac, 13 September 1930, in Kojevnikov (1993: 43).

  40 Einstein (1931: 73).

  41 Comment made by Einstein on his arrival in New York on 11 December 1930, reported in the LA Times, 12 December 1930, p. 1.

  42 Letter to Dirac from Tamm, 29 December 1930, Kojevnikov (1993: 48–9).

  43 Letter from Kemble to Garrett Birkhoff, 3 March 1933 (AHQP).

  44 Dirac attended the dinner on 17 December 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/79/6 (FSU).

  45 Letter from Kapitza to his mother, 16 December 1921, in Boag et al. (1990: 138–9).

  46 Da Costa Andrade (1964: 48).

  47 Da Costa Andrade (1964: 162).

  48 Records of the Cavendish dinners (CAV 7/1) 1930, p. 10 (UCAM).

  49 Records of the Cavendish dinners (CAV 7/1) 1930, p. 10 (UCAM).

  50 Snow (1931).

  51 Snow (1934). Dirac features in the book, and some of his opinions also appear, unattributed. See Snow (1934: 97–8 and 178–83).

  52 Letter from Chandrasekhar to his father, 10 October 1930, quoted in Miller (2005: 96).

  53 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 8 November 1930, Dirac Papers, 1/3/13 (FSU).

  Chapter fifteen

  1 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 27 April 1931, Dirac Papers, 1/4/1 (FSU). Dirac appears to have left Bristol on 15 April (postcard from Dirac to his parents, 15 April 1931, DDOCS).

  2 Letter from Dirac to Van Vleck, 24 April 1931, AHQP.

  3 Kapitza Club, 21 July 1931. See the Kapitza Club notebook in CHURCHILL.

  4 Dirac (1982: 604); Dirac (1978).

  5 The size of the force between two attracting monopoles separated by a millionth of a millimetre – roughly the distance between the electron and the prot
on in a hydrogen atom – is about a ten-thousandth of the weight of a medium-sized apple.

  6 Heilbron (1979: 87–96).

  7 Sherlock Holmes used these words in the novel The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (1926), and used extremely similar words in several other stories.

  8 The phrase ‘theorist’s theorist’ is often applied to Dirac. See, for example, Galison (2000).

  9 Tamm arrived in Cambridge on 9 May and left on 25 June.

  10 Fen (1976: 181).

  11 Crowther (1970: 103).

  12 Letter from Tamm to his wife, undated c. May 1931, in Kojevnikov (1993: 54).

  13 Letter to Dirac from Tamm, 18 May 1931, in Kojevnikov (1993: 54–5).

  14 Werskey (1978: 92).

  15 Annan (1992: 181).

  16 James Bell (1896–1975) was one of Scotland’s leading climbers and was fascinated by the Soviet Union. He stayed in contact with Dirac for decades.

  17 Wersley (1978: 138–49).

  18 Bukharin (1931).

  19 Brown (2005: 107).

  20 Letter to Dirac from Tamm, 11 July 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  21 Home Office Warrant 4081, 27 January 1931, KV 2/777, UKNATARCHI.

  22 Postcard from Dirac to his parents, 13 July 1931 (DDOCS).

  23 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 8 July 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  24 The most direct comment on this from Dirac was reported by his mother in her letter to Betty from Stockholm in December 1933: ‘[Dirac] says it is awful and time we made an improvement.’ In her letters to Dirac, she often mentions the disrepair of the family home.

  25 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 19 July 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  26 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 20 July 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  27 Postcard from Flo to Betty Dirac, 1 August 1931: ‘Having a sea voyage with Paul. The weather is fine and it is lovely. Back 6.35am Sunday. Hope you are both looking after each other’ (DDOCS).

  28 The area was officially named the Glacier National Park only in the following year.

  29 Robertson (1985).

  30 The furniture budget was $26,000; the budget for rugs was nearly $8,000. Batterson (2007: 612). Fine Hall is now called Jones Hall.

  31 Jacobson, N., ‘Recollections of Princeton’ in Robertson (1985).

  32 Letter from Pauli to Peierls, 29 September 1931, in Hermann et al. (1979).

  33 Enz (2002: 224–5).

  34 New York Times, 17 June 1931.

  35 Pais (1986: 313–17).

  36 Brown (1978).

  37 Enz (2002: 211).

  38 ‘Lectures on Quantum Mechanics’, Princeton University, October 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/26/15 (FSU). These notes were transcribed by Banesh Hoffman and checked by Dirac.

  39 ‘Dr Millikan Gets Medal’, New York Times, 5 September 1928.

  40 Kevles (1971: 180); Galison (1987: Chapter 3, pp. 86–7).

  41 Interview with Robert Oppenheimer, AHQP, 18 November 1963, p. 16.

  42 De Maria and Russo (1985: 247, 251–6).

  43 Letter from Anderson to Millikan, 3 November 1931, quoted in De Maria and Russo (1985: 243). In this letter, Anderson describes data taken over the previous ‘very few days’.

  44 Interview with Carl Anderson, 11 January 1979, p. 34, available at http://oralhistories. library.caltech.edu/89 (accessed 13 May 2008), p. 34.

  45 De Maria and Russo (1985: 243).

  46 Letter to Dirac from Martin Charlesworth, 16 October 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU). Charlesworth was Dirac’s personal tutor during his postgraduate years and was evidently fond of him. Later, on 19 March 1935, he wrote a letter to Dirac ‘to send my [i.e. his] love’ – a remarkably forward phrase in that cultural milieu, Dirac Papers, 2/3/1 (FSU).

  47 Batterson (2006: Chapter 5).

  48 Brendon (2000: Chapter 4).

  49 New York Times, 14 June 1931.

  50 Letter from Gamow to Dirac, written in June 1965, Dirac Papers, 2/5/13 (FSU). See also Gamow (1970: 99).

  51 Gorelik and Frenkel (1994: 20–2). See also Kojevnikov (2004: 76).

  52 Gorelik and Frenkel (1994: 50–1). Gamow gives a partially inaccurate account of this incident in his autobiography (1970).

  53 The first Soviet edition is discussed in detail in Dalitz (1995), which includes a translation of the prefaces to the book.

  54 Ivanenko had ensured that the book had been translated with no changes, but the Russian edition does include an additional chapter on applying quantum mechanics to practical problems. It is not clear whether Dirac added the section as a result of ideological pressure.

  55 Greenspan (2005: 161).

  56 Letter from Dirac to Tamm, 21 January 1932, in Kojevnikov (1993: 60). Dirac was learning the branches of mathematics known as group theory and differential geometry.

  57 Interview with Oppenheimer, AHQP, 20 November 1963, p. 1.

  58 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 9 October 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  59 Letter to Dirac from his mother, dated 28/31 September 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  60 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 22 December 1931, Dirac Papers, 2/2/4 (FSU).

  61 Brown (1997: Chapter 6).

  62 Cathcart (2004: 210–12); Chadwick (1984: 42–5).

  63 Brown (1997: 106).

  Chapter sixteen

  1 Eddington made this remark in Leicester, at the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science: ‘Star Birth Sudden Lemaître Asserts’, New York Times, 12 September 1933.

  2 An English translation of the play, by Gamow’s wife Barbara, is given in Gamow (1966: 165–218). For comments on the production: von Meyenn (1985: 308–13).

  3 Wheeler (1985: 224).

  4 Crowther (1970: 100).

  5 Letter from Darwin to Goudsmit, 12 December 1932, APS.

  6 Interview with Beck, AHQP, 22 April 1967, p. 23.

  7 Interview with Klein, AHQP, 28 February 1963, p. 18. Klein recalled that ‘Heisenberg once told me that when Dirac got the Nobel Prize some years later – in 1933 – he asked Dirac if he believed in his own theory. Dirac answered, in his very precise way, that a year before the positive electron was discovered he had ceased to believe in the theory’ (interview with Klein, AHQP, 28 February 1963, p. 18).

  8 Cathcart (2004: Chapters 12 and 13).

  9 Reynolds’s Illustrated News, 1 May 1932.

  10 Daily Mirror, 3 May 1932.

  11 Cathcart (2004: 252). Einstein’s lecture took place on 6 May; see the Cambridge Review, 13 May 1932, p. 382.

  12 Howarth (1978: 187).

  13 Howarth (1978: 224).

  14 Report in Sunday Dispatch on 19 November 1933.

  15 Interview with von Weizsächer, AHQP, 9 June 1963, p. 19.

  16 Note from P. H. Winfield to Dirac, Dirac Papers, 2/2/5 (FSU).

  17 Letter from Sir Joseph Larmor to Terrot Reaveley Glover (1869–1943), the classical scholar and historian, 20 February 1934, STJOHN.

  18 Infeld (1941: 170).

  19 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 27 July 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU).

  20 Letter to Dirac from his sister, 14 October 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU).

  21 Letter to Dirac from his sister, 11 July 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU).

  22 Letter to Dirac from his sister, 15 October 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU).

  23 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 21 April 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU). See also the letter of 1 June 1932.

  24 Letter to Dirac from his father, Dirac Papers, 1/1/10 (FSU).

  25 The paper combined several parts, one mostly from Dirac, the other mostly from Fock and Podolsky, and also a part that developed during the process of writing in correspondence between the three authors. One snapshot of the collaboration is in the letter written to Dirac by Podolsky in Kharkov on 16 November 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU). I thank Alexei Kojevnikov for this information.

  26 Weisskopf (1990: 72–3).

  27 Infeld (1941: 172).
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  28 Article in the Los Angeles Times by Harry Carr, 30 July 1932.

  29 For more detail on the discovery of the anti-electron, see Anderson (1983: 139–40), and Darrow (1934).

  30 Interview with Louis Alvarez by Charles Weiner, 14–15 February 1967, American Institute of Physics, p. 10.

  31 Von Kármán (1967: 150).

  32 Von Kármán (1967: 150).

  33 Interview with Carl Anderson, 11 January 1979, available online at http://oralhistories. library.caltech.edu/89 (accessed 13 May 2008).

  34 Galison (1987: 90).

  35 New York Times, 2 October 1932.

  36 Letter from Robert Oppenheimer to Frank Oppenheimer, autumn 1932, in Smith and Weiner (1980: 159).

  37 Nye (2004: 54). The incident, recalled by Blackett’s student Frank Champion, probably took place during the 1931–2 academic year. I am grateful to Mary Jo Nye for this information.

  38 See http://www.aps-pub.com/proceedings/1462/207.pdf (accessed 13 May 2008).

  39 De Maria and Russo (1985: 254).

  40 Contribution of Occhialini to the Memorial Meeting for Lord Blackett, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 29 (2) (1975).

  41 Dalitz and Peierls (1986: 167). The anecdote is due to Maurice Pryce.

  42 Dirac’s notes on Fowler’s lectures on ‘Analytic Dynamics’ are in Dirac Papers, 2/32/1 (FSU).

  43 Letter from Dirac to Fock, 11 November 1932, passed to me by Alexei Kojevnikov.

  44 Greenspan (2005: 170).

  45 Bristol Evening Post, 28 October 1932.

  46 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 26 October 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/7 (FSU).

  47 Letter to Dirac from his mother, 9 January 1933, Dirac Papers, 2/2/8 (FSU).

  Chapter seventeen

  1 IAS Archives Faculty Series, Box 32, Folder: ‘Veblen, 1933’.

  2 De Maria and Russo (1985: 266 and 266 n.). Anderson’s paper had been available in the university library from the mid-autumn of 1932.

  3 Archie Clow, contributing to Radio 3 programme Science and Society in the Thirties (1965). Script stored in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

  4 Schücking (1999: 27).

  5 Interview with Léon Rosenfeld, AHQP, 22 July 1963, p. 8.

  6 Halpern (1988: 467).

  7 Letter to Dirac from Isabel Whitehead, 20 July 1932, Dirac Papers, 2/2/6 (FSU).