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Hello, colleagues

I have just finished reading “The Strangest Man” a biography of Paul A M 
Dirac, a founder of quantum mechanics and winner with Schrödinger of the 
1933 Nobel Prize. I could hardly put it down, and recommend it 
unreservedly to anyone interested in the history of science, and in very 
unusual people. It is written by a colleague of ours, Graham Farmelo, 
Senior Research Fellow at the London Science Museum, and Adjunct 
Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston.

The Strangest Man describes brilliantly the life and manner of this 
remarkable man - who predicted antimatter from pure theory, was 
Einstein’s first choice as a colleague in Princeton, and had most 
distinctive likes, dislikes and relationships. But, the book is also a 
rich and readable history of physics. Farmelo paints in broad strokes 
the other characters of the quantum revolution and their relationships, 
as well as the international politics in which the developments are set. 
As a theoretical physicist himself, he understands the subject matter, 
and explains it as necessary as he treats Dirac’s life and work. And, 
because he is of the science museum/science centre community, he 
explains the physics in terms for everyone to understand - from Planck 
to recent times.

The Strangest Man (Faber & Faber, 2009) won the LA Times's Science Book 
Prize this year, and the Costa Prize for Biography. Harry Truman said 
that one of the best ways to learn history is by reading biographies, 
and this one surely bears this out. It is a tour de force.

Peter Anderson

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1449 Grant Street, Victoria  BC  V8R 1M4
T/F  250 592 3332
Cell 250 885 6724

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