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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom cover

The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

Graham Farmelo

1

award won

8

score

#1238 of 3,809 books · #442 in Biography & Memoir

Won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology (2009).

The Strangest Man won the Costa Biography Award. The Strangest Man is an account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather. Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship. The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history.

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Publisher
Faber & Faber
ISBN-13
9780571250073
Topics
Quantum mechanicsPhysicists' livesHistory of science

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Graham Farmelo has no other awarded or shortlisted books yet.

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