The strangest man

Paul Dirac, the man Oppenheimer described as a Theoreticians Theoretician, was one of the key figures in quantum physics. Considering just how reserved Dirac was it it impressive that the author managed to write 500+ page book about him. Of course because of this, his story is mostly told through his ground braking work on quantum mechanics and through his friends and colleagues, and their reactions to his cold exterior (a lot of amusing anecdotes here).

He only spoke when he knew exactly what he was going to say and with such clarity that more than a few words were often unnecessary. His need for clarity and mathematical beauty is best shown with his colleagues reaction upon receiving his work: "as if they were already finished marble statues that descended from the heavens." Also his textbook on Quantum mechanics that he wrote in the 30s is admired and in print still to this day.

Unfortunately his need for mathematical beauty has stifled him in his later life, that he ended up just like Einstein in that they both couldn't except new developments in physics, but were humored because of their stature.

An finally, in the later chapters the author discussed in good taste the elephant in the room considering Diracs behavior and emotional coldness, meaning his very probable autism. He believed that beside his tragic childhood this also had to be mentioned in order to clearly understand this man, but he also clarified that we can never be absolutely sure of this.

In our age of identity politics, my peeps would be the strange people. This is the story of one of us and based somewhat on my own experience, I'd like to give my theory of what contributed to his strangeness. It matches the data in this book and I find it beautiful which is Dirac's requirement for a good theory.

Imagine that you are a young child and find the culture you're immersed in makes no sense. You don't know why people behave the way they do or why they are interested in what they pursue. You try to act as they do but since you're just going through the motions, no one is convinced. The rules you are forced to follow make even less sense. You give up communicating because you don't expect to be understood. You hide your reactions because they are criticized and condemned. You are seen as lacking empathy, but empathy requires an understanding of others that you don't have because so much of it is cultural yet it is imagined by others to be natural. You're drawn to the literal and to subjects like mathematics with rules that don't seem arbitrary and alien. Technical people are known to lack social skills but perhaps the cause and effect go in reverse. Those who can't grok people will find comfort in tech. Your interest and time studying science pays off as you develop skills while others mainly avoid it. Also, as an outsider, you approach problems in new untried ways. Your behavior seems strange to others but to you, it's all that you understand. No one seems to understand why you are the way you are--that is THEY lack empathy with you.

What is wrong with your brain that the culture is difficult to adjust to? Sometimes you feel broken. Other times it feels like is that everyone else is broken; that the ability to absorb the culture requires belief in it and those who believe are deluded. Also, you are praised for your understanding which encourages you to persist. Sometimes, solving difficult problems is just a matter of having the confidence to not give up working on them.

Seen this way, Dirac's behavior is adaptive rather than strange. Scientists look outward toward the world to find answers and not within to the experiences of the person which are also private and thus not the data of science. Farmelo thus thinks in terms of behavior and diagnosis, landing on autism spectrum disorder (despite Dirac's verbal fluency) though recognizing that understanding of this condition is in its infancy like particle physics was when Dirac was born.

Later, you can see Dirac isn't sucked into the anti-communism craze that the "normals" who are quick to follow the culture are prey. Perhaps his lack of cultural understanding isn't always a negative. Didn't Einstein discover that what appears to be a fact turns out to vary with the circumstances of the observer?

Recognizing that most of his readers lack the ability to understand modern physics, a condition that isn't diagnosed as a disease, Farmelo avoids giving too much detail about it. He tells us that Dirac favored using Hamiltonians and rejected renormalization. Curious about what these might mean I turned to the internet. I also looked at Dirac's books on relativity and quantum mechanics. My knowledge of these subjects isn't great (you can look at some of the related books I read in my Goodreads profile). As a teen, I'd read [b:One, Two, Three...Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science|52670|One, Two, Three...Infinity Facts and Speculations of Science|George Gamow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388356090s/52670.jpg|51372] by George Gamow, who at the time I didn't realize was Russian and a scientist as well as one who wrote books for teens like me. All this I didn't learn until the current book where Gamow has a significant role. (In the audiobook, his name is pronounced on some occasions as rhyming with "cow" and other times rhyming with "dove". Also, Von Neuman's name gets pronounced as "Newman" and other times as "Noyman".)

Although in my youth, I had studied both engineering drawing and projective geometry, subjects Farmelo says were an important influence, I still couldn't get too far in Dirac's writings. I did however get a clear understanding of his aesthetic. He approaches problems by looking for commonalities or invariants. He wants to see disparate phenomena as related to each other. He wants to adapt techniques used elsewhere to new uses. He designs notations to emphasize similarity and symmetry. This is a mathematician's idea of beauty which he shared with Einstein.

From my perspective, valuing beauty over data in science does not qualify one as a mystic. I think Farmelo uses "mystic" almost as a slur. He seems to be trying to figure out how someone with the "mystic"affliction got to discover such amazing things. He thought going over the data of Dirac's life would reveal it. In the end he settles on autism which is trendy these days. Perhaps I'm wrong about Farmelo's motivation here but my guess is as least as valid as some of his speculations about Dirac's inner life. He still managed to turn out a book worth reading.

Jeg forfremmer lige denne kommentar til en egentlig anmeldelse.

En lang og grundig bog der indeholder meget indgående beskrivelser af Diracs privatliv. Forfatteren har en underliggende hypotese om at Dirac i dag nok ville have fået en diagnose i Autisme/Asperger spektret, og han bruger en stor del af bogen på inddirekte at underbygge denne hypotese. De sidste kapitler hvor han så fremfører hypotesen og forsøger at underbygge den, virker dog en anelse tynde.

Når det er sagt er det også en dejligt grundig bog, som giver et rigtig godt indblik hvordan miljøet og de sociale relationer mellem kvantefysikere, relativitetsteoretikere og matematikere i 20'erne, 30'erne og 40'erne var, og i hvordan de forholdt sig til udviklingen i Tyskland, Rusland og selve krigen. Jeg vil vove at påstå at bogen er værd at læse alene på grund af dette indblik.

Jeg bliver i hvert fald altid glad af at læse om videnskabsmiljøet i den periode, hvor det virker som om der var en del højere til loftet end der er i dag.

Hvis man er interesserede i bøger som denne vil jeg i samme ombæring på det varmeste anbefale Gleicks Feynmann biografi, som jeg synes er endnu bedre. [b:Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman|98685|Genius The Life and Science of Richard Feynman|James Gleick|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320409497s/98685.jpg|191828]