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The BIG Question

All the information that you’ve read isn’t important until I answer one simple question with a not so simple answer: "Why is Paul Dirac Notable?" To find out the answer to this question we must first answer another, what makes a person notable? A notable person is someone who has a positive influence on our lives and the progress of humanity. To understand how the word 'notable' perfectly describes Paul Dirac, we must look at his greatest achievements and his greatest failures which bring us back to the beginning.
Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on August 8, 1902, in Bristol, England where he would grow up and go to university. He was born to Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac – an immigrant from Switzerland who worked as a French teacher – and Florence Hannah Dirac – the daughter of a ship captain and librarian at Bristol Central Library. His parents' relationship was tense. He and his siblings (Béatrice Isabelle Marguerite and Reginald Charles Félix (the latter of which would sadly take his life in 1925)) were very close. Dirac went to school at Bishop Road Primary School, then later went to (what is now) Cotham School, where his father taught French.
Dirac went on to study electrical engineering at the University of Bristol on a City of Bristol University Scholarship. He was awarded a £70 scholarship to Cambridge in 1921, but this fell short of the funds he needed to go there. He graduated with honors two years later he finished his Bachelor of Arts degree with a £140 grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. With this additional £140, Dirac had enough money to go to Cambridge. He strived in his classes and eventually became the Lucasian Chair.
At Cambridge, he followed his interests in General Relativity and quantum physics.

With 1928 came a breakthrough for Paul Dirac. He had been working on his Dirac Equation for some time now and had finally,


I chose Paul Dirac to be my notable because after watching Big Bang Theory I started to go through a physics phase. Initially, when I started research on Paul Dirac I didn't understand a thing. As my research progressed I understood his formulas and work, and while his work isn't exactly simple, my knowledge has grown with my connection to Paul Dirac. I've always been interested in science but thanks to Paul Dirac theoretical physics has opened up to me. I genuinely believe that Paul Dirac was a notable person and that what he has done has changed the world, even if no one knows it. 

Paul Dirac was incredibly introverted. He would've turned down his Nobel Prize had Ernest Rutherford not told him that it would create more publicity refusing it. He even turned down knighthood! Paul Dirac revolutionized our view on theoretical physics. He's made groundbreaking steps in the fields of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. He proved the existence of the positron (the corresponding anti-particle to the electron) and worked on the Manhattan Project inventing ways to separate Uranium-238 isotopes.

All in all, Paul Dirac was a severely underappreciated English Theoretical physicist and to any who knows of him, was an extremely notable person. Notability is often associated with how well-known a person is. Paul Dirac, while having known and collaborated with many famous physicists (such as Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrodinger, and many others (a lot of whom worked on the Manhattan Project with him)). But this was okay with him, Paul Dirac didn't do what he did for fame and glory as some other physicists had, but more for knowledge and teaching others this knowledge. He was an incredibly successful man who worked on the likes of String theory, atomic theory and founded topics like quantum physics, quantum mechanics, and quantum electrodynamics (a subject that Richard Feynman would become so well known for). Dirac wasn't notable for his achievements though. He was notable for who he was and at heart, Paul Dirac was a good person. He made significant achievements in various fields and REALLY did not like the press. He was notable. He influenced our lives for the better and was a truly wonderful person.

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