'A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.' Michael FraynThe Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning 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.'A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph
ISBN: | 9780571222865 |
Publisher: | Faber & Faber |
Imprint: | Faber & Faber |
Published date: | 24 Dec 2009 |
DEWEY: | 530.092 |
DEWEY edition: | 22 |
Language: | English |
Number of pages: | 539 |
Weight: | 444g |
Height: | 197mm |
Width: | 126mm |
Spine width: | 36mm |