This   level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Mathematics High‑priority This article is within the scope of WikiProject Mathematics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of mathematics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MathematicsWikipedia:WikiProject MathematicsTemplate:WikiProject Mathematicsmathematics articles High This article has been rated as High-priority on the project's priority scale. Physics: Biographies Top‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by Biographies Taskforce. History of Science High‑importance This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.History of ScienceWikipedia:WikiProject History of ScienceTemplate:WikiProject History of Sciencehistory of science articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Biography: Science and Academia This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as High-importance). Bristol High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Bristol, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Bristol-related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BristolWikipedia:WikiProject BristolTemplate:WikiProject BristolBristol articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. More information: /  At least one photograph is included in this article This article does not require a map This article has an infobox Switzerland Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Switzerland, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Switzerland on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SwitzerlandWikipedia:WikiProject SwitzerlandTemplate:WikiProject SwitzerlandSwitzerland articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Autism High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Autism, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of all aspects of autism and autistic culture on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.AutismWikipedia:WikiProject AutismTemplate:WikiProject AutismAutism articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article was reviewed by Nature (journal) on December 14, 2005. Comments: It was found to have 9 errors. For more information about external reviews of Wikipedia articles and about this review in particular, see this page.

Archives

1, 2

This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 5 sections are present.

If you have never used this tool before, I recommend it: http://can-we-link-it.nickj.org/. You just type (or copy) the name of an article in the box, and Nick rummages through your article, to end up by suggesting many different internal links which you might have overlooked. Most of them are good; some are not (you have to check). Nick won't make any suggestions until the syntax of your article is correct: Usually bad syntax is caused by stray brackets or apostrophes in the copy. Nick provides you with a list of the bad apples, but then you have to seek them out. A fairly easy way is to copy the text into a word processor and then search for the stray marks there. (The new links for this article are indicated here.) Of course one must be cautious in doing so and not engage in linking just for the sake of linking. I hope this has been helpful. Again, I recommend using Nick's very valuable tool. Yours sincerely,

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Fix the spelling mistakes in the last sentence of the second paragraph of the education section. Currently the sentence reads "Under the influence of Peter Fraser, whom Dirac called the best mathematics teacher, he had the most interest in prjective geometry, and began applying it to the geometrical version of relativity Minkowski developped". The words "projective" and "developed" are misspelled. Hp 1215 ( talk) 04:17, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply

 Done AnnaMankad ( talk) 04:43, 26 May 2023 (UTC) reply

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Add to the end of relevant personal life:

A bust of Paul Dirac now resides at Florida State University near Dirac Library along with other notable figures in STEM, many of which he brought with him to Florida State. ChrisBernhardt ( talk) 04:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC) reply

I think this would fit in best in the Legacy section, but there are already several images there and it would overrun the text. This is a useful photo, but I'm not sure where it could go.-- ♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 06:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC) reply

 Done - added the image in the FSU section, rearranged some of the other images to prevent bunching. Polyamorph ( talk) 14:26, 2 November 2023 (UTC) reply

I'm removing this claim: "Dirac further postulated the existence of gravitational waves, declaring them to have "physical significance" in his 1959 lecture at the Lindau Meetings"

Gravitational waves have a long history, including postulates by Laplace and Poincare. See for example Cervantes-Cota, Jorge L., Salvador Galindo-Uribarri, and George F. Smoot. "A brief history of gravitational waves." Universe 2.3 (2016): 22. or https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-secret-history-of-gravitational-waves Johnjbarton ( talk) 14:11, 2 November 2023 (UTC) reply

The view on religion section is, IMO, too large compared to its role in Dirac's life. It is 4 times longer than the section on Honors. That seems out of whack. Johnjbarton ( talk) 22:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC) reply

The current article claims Dirac worked on centrifuges in 1934. This seems unlikely. We should have a citation and and explanation of the context since such work is out of context for this period of Dirac's career.

Two sources date as joining the UK Tubes project which developed the centrifuge:

• Kragh, Helge. Dirac: a scientific biography. United Kingdom, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• PAUL DIRAC: THE ATOMIC CENTRIFUGE AND THE TUBE ALLOYS PROJECT By DANIEL P. VROBEL

There is comment in the Kragh book about something in "Chapter 6" which I cannot access. Johnjbarton ( talk) 16:47, 11 January 2024 (UTC) reply

@ Reaper1945 Thanks for the ref, but I still dispute the date. The ref does not say anything about when Dirac did this work. Johnjbarton ( talk) 19:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Can someone help with the source code for harvnb references? Farmelo explains Dirac's isotope separation experiments on p.248-249, and then confirms the 1934 by saying on p.249 that "During a visit to Cambridge in May 1934, Wigner saw the apparatus and asked Dirac questions about it,". I tried to cite these two pages in the article, but my cite only shows the text of p.248 and says that p.249 is unavailable. Can someone fix this? Dirac66 ( talk) 02:04, 13 January 2024 (UTC) reply

I guess your harvnb is not the problem. Google Books does not have the preview for Farmelo. So no content for you. No worries, Google Books links are a gift that only work sometimes.

IMO it would be great if the article could clarify why an all time genius in QM theory would be Lucasian Professor of Mathematics one year, invent an isotope separation, the cosmology? Seems like there would be a nice story even in one sentence that would explain why he would work on separation before WWII. Johnjbarton ( talk) 02:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Re harvnb I tried adding quote= after my citation and it worked (to my surprise).

And re Dirac's varied interests at Cambridge, I think most people are interested in more than one topic. Also separating an element into isotopes would have been a challenge of interest as soon as isotopes were discovered. This does not imply that he foresaw the eventual military application. Dirac66 ( talk) 23:03, 14 January 2024 (UTC) reply