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by dmunoz 4252 days ago
Graham Farmelo also wrote The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom [0] which I thoroughly enjoyed reading. It's not very technical, which is sometimes a nice attribute in these sorts of biographies, but it covers the science as it develops, if a little too briefly.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/The-Strangest-Man-Hidden-Mystic/dp/046...
2 comments
ab-irato 4252 days ago
> covers the science as it develops, if a little too briefly.

Most biographies of scientists focus on their character and personal life rather their work.

There are very few technical biographies, even of highly technical people. Readers won't understand the work of the scientist any better after reading through one of them.

Quantum Man[0] by Lawrence Krauss specifically aims to be a solution to this regarding Richard Feynman. And even in this case the exposition needs to be so terse that only the highly technical reader will fully understand most aspects of Feynman's work in the correct context.

Do you know of any biography of Dirac that edges on "if a little too technical"? I would love to read that.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Man-Richard-Feynmans-Discoveri...

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pvitz 4252 days ago
A very good resource are Thomas Kuhn's interviews with Dirac [1]. He talked about his childhood (they barely spoke anything at home, because they had to talk in French...), his university studies and his findings. It is quite long but worth it!

[1] http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4575_1.html

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ab-irato 4252 days ago
This is great material! I wonder if the recordings are available somewhere on-line to the public.
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pvitz 4252 days ago
As they have a lot of material of other important physicists too, I would be very interested. They have some voice clips online, so I hope they will release the full interviews one day.
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pseudolus 4252 days ago
"Dirac: A Scientific Biography" provides a more technical overview than Farmelo's book (not to detract from Farmelo's book which is very well written and provides a great deal of depth about Dirac the individual).

http://www.amazon.com/Dirac-Scientific-Biography-Helge-Kragh...

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matthewmcg 4252 days ago
Jagdish Mehra's The Beat of a Different Drum: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman is even more technical than Krauss and is worth checking out if you really want to understand his scientific contributions.
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lgas 4252 days ago
It's worth noting this book is available to read for free on Kindle Unlimited.
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