RE: [asa] URL: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

George,
I know the story well. It seems that Dirac had made a vague connection between commutators and classical Poisson brackets. However, this was on a weekend when the library was closed and Dirac had to wait anxiously until Monday to be able to verify his hunch. I often tell that to students to make them realize the wealth of information that they can immediately access online. Those were the good old days!
Dirac became my scientific hero when I started to study quantum mechanics from his book, eight hours a day during the first summer of my first year as a graduate student. I actually went to hear Dirac at Xavier University in Cincinnati, sponsored by Podolsky of the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, while a graduate student. My wife Mary took my book and had Dirac signed it. The nuns that were at the lecture were impressed that someone would ask the autograph of such an illustrious scientist instead of the usual athletic jocks as most do.

Moorad
________________________________________
From: gmurphy10@neo.rr.com [gmurphy10@neo.rr.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 22, 2009 10:33 AM
To: AmericanScientificAffiliation; Alexanian, Moorad
Subject: Re: [asa] URL: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

Just one comment on the article. When Dirac was asked once what he saw as his greatest discovery (or maybe it was his most satisfying discovery), expecting it to be the Dirac equation, Dirac was surprised him. It was, he said, the relationship between commutators and Poisson brackets.

Shalom,
George

---- "Alexanian wrote:
> http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=24150422
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Sat Aug 22 11:07:14 2009