David Kaiser writes:

Unlike some less fortunate figures in the history of science, who suffered long delays before their contributions were recognised, Dirac rocketed to the top of the profession. He was elected to the Royal Society at the almost unheard of age of 27. In July 1932, just shy of his 30th birthday, he was elevated to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge – once held by the equally precocious Isaac Newton. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Schrödinger, and remains one of the youngest recipients. Though he was by no means finished as a physicist by this point – he continued to produce important, intriguing work in quantum theory and cosmology, most of which would bear fruit only later in the hands of others – the five-year period following his dissertation was one of the most brilliant and far-reaching bursts of scientific creativity ever known.

(LRB 26 February 2009)

Faber | hardback 539 pp. |ISBN: 9780571222780