It doesn’t seem terribly likely that I am going to generate much discussion about this book. And I make no assumptions that anyone cares much about what I think of it. I might even have been concerned that posting about this book might be frowned on, given just how strongly Physics Forums seeks to defend its position as a purely scientific and not in any way a philosophical group of forums. Except that, of course, I didn’t start this thread, and more particularly, I was lead to this thread, and indeed to the book this thread is about, by one of the forum mentors. In any case, having read it, I have some points that I think are worthwhile making, so what the hell. If this post echoes around an empty chamber then, so be it.
For a biography written with quite such acute judgement and unerring professionalism as this one, it is quite surprising to have Farmelo afford real insight into his own personal response to Dirac, into his researches for this book, and even a little insight into his own career in the penultimate chapter. The first person pronoun suddenly appears unexpectedly when you are nearly through what is a deep and penetrating third person account that does demand quite a bit of effort from its reader. Its not that it is unwelcome or intrusive, it just takes you by surprise a little bit. It is a real change of mood just as you are reaching the end.
From that chapter, it emerges that Farmelo is himself a student of theoretical physics. I suppose that it would seem that he would have to be to write any kind of an insightful biography of a man who possessed one of the twentieth century’s most exceptional scientific minds. But it is clear enough that Farmelo is a bona fide writer, and while he does undoubtedly deal with the science very skilfully, I would suggest that anyone coming to this book looking for a deep technical understanding of Dirac’s scientific work is likely to be disappointed. It does do a very comprehensive job of laying out the precise context for each of Dirac’s important scientific achievements. Personally, I find that fascinating and believe in the value and importance of that insight. But I can understand that many would not share that view. Dirac, for example. It is clear that Einstein was a genuine scientific hero for Dirac, but I have the strongest feeling that he never read a biography of Einstein. In any case, it is clear enough to me that the exercise of writing this book was, and the value and benefit in reading it is entirely philosophical.
This goes to the heart of my own personal drive to understand. When I hear some of the more seemingly outlandish, counter-intuitive, sometimes scepticism provoking scientific ideas, I don’t just want to have the technical details explained to me, I always feel a compunction to understand what generated the idea, what lead serious, dispassionate, rational scientists to offer such a challenging idea as a scientific explanation. That is why I found such a resonance in the account of Dirac’s efforts to find out more about relativity theory when few courses were available and very little literature about it was reliable. Farmelo tells us that
‘[Dirac wanted to] find an accessible technical account of the [relativity] theory that would explain, step by step, how Einstein had developed his ideas.'
And yet, and yet, when Dirac himself later became an educator, both as an author of textbooks and as a lecturer, his reputation was built on a straight to the heart of the matter approach that was most appreciated by the best students. Farmelo gives a telling account of the occasion when Niels Bohr first received a copy of Dirac’s textbook
The Principles of Quantum Mechanics.
‘Even if the author’s name were not on the cover, his identity would have been obvious to Bohr from a quick flick through: the unadorned presentation, the logical construction of the subject from first principles, and the complete absence of historical perspective, philosophical niceties and illustrative calculations.’
A little like the music of Bach, the most telling evidence of just how good his work was is the response it drew from those best placed to know.
‘Dirac’s peers marvelled at its elegance and at the deceptively plain language, which somehow seemed to reveal new insights on each reading, like a great poem.’
And for me, the reality of the impossibility of penetrating Dirac’s great contribution to scientific literature comes in Farmelo’s next comment:
‘The book had been written with no regard for his readers’ intellectual shortcomings…’
But the book is not just a comprehensive account of Dirac’s own life, it also paints a very vivid picture of many of Dirac’s contemporaries. Heisenberg and Schrödinger, Bohr and Born, Kapitza and Ehrenfest, Pauli and Fermi, Oppenheimer and Feynman. It is interesting to think that biographies of nearly every one of these individuals could serve as a different perspective on virtually the same basic story – that of the early development of Quantum Physics. Many other prominent figures make their appearances like, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner – the latter brother to Dirac’s wife.
And also in that same penultimate chapter, Farmelo does, finally, give his own consideration of whether or not Dirac was truly autistic. He considers the key criteria for a modern diagnosis of autism and notes that Dirac seems to fit every one. Except that autism is a condition from which its sufferers do not escape, and the story of Dirac’s life that the book has just finished telling does reflect the reality that Dirac did mellow in later life. Not just because of a marriage to someone that it was his great and unlikely good fortune to find, but because of the realities of being a professor at Cambridge that necessitated the learning of effective communication skills, and because of his membership of a scientific community that also made its contribution to drawing him out of himself. Ultimately I suppose, Dirac’s upbringing was just a prime example of the kind of thing that Larkin’s infamous poem refers to and his extreme introspection in his younger days was caused by demons that he never totally exorcised, but ones he eventually learned to live with and to control.
