Dear Diary,

 

Today is the 18th of November, 1933. Tomorrow, Erwin Schrodinger and I will win the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of "new productive forms of atomic theory". As happy as I am I wish that life could just go back to normal. The press is relentless and I don't get any to myself. While I am extremely proud of my and Schrodinger's work, there's still a countless number of things I want to achieve and work on. Ten years from now everything will be better. Life should be back to normal and I will be able to work without any interruptions. How I long for 1943. I wonder what I will say in my speech tomorrow. Maybe I could address the Great Depression or maybe what's happening in Germany. How would I put that in though, it may just anger people. Besides people came here to listen about science. I could go into the basics of atomic theory so they understand, but that would just confuse them and I could come off a little condescending. I should probably start off talking about what an honor it is to receive the physics Nobel Prize and what an honor it was to work with Erwin Schrodinger. I could thank the selection committee for giving me this great opportunity and my loved ones for all the help they have given me over the years. Better to keep it short and simple though. How about this for my starting line,

 

"I should like to thank you all very much for the great honor you have done to me, and the kindness you have shown me, which I hardly feel I deserve."

 

It should work. I should probably keep it. I could talk about physics, after all that is why I won this prize. I probably shouldn't go over the top with my explanation though. Other Nobel categories would be so much easier to write about. I could include that! I actually probably should talk about the Great Depression and the current economic state. It would be ignorant not to. Maybe it could go something like,

 

"I think that in replying on an occasion like this one should say something about the character of the work for which the prize has been awarded. This would be fairly easy in the case of the Nobel prizes in some subjects, for example, peace. But the physicist at work is at a disadvantage in this respect on account of the very specialized nature of his work, which cannot be made intelligible without an intensive preliminary course of study. All the same I think I may be able to give you some idea of the processes of thought which must be used, because these same processes of thought may be applied to other problems  much more immediately connected to us with the welfare of the human race and for this reason much more familiar to us all, namely economic problems. There is in my opinion a great similarity between the problems provided by the mysterious behavior of the atom and those provided by the atom and those provided by the present economic paradoxes confronting the world. In both cases one is given a great many facts which are expressible with numbers, and one has to find the underlying principles. The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers. In both cases one is given a great many facts which are expressible with numbers, and one has to find the underlying principles. The methods of theoretical physics should be applicable to all those branches of thought in which the essential features are expressible with numbers."

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(Please keep in mind that this text was made from snippets of Paul Dirac's Nobel banquet speech, to view my source, click here)