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Title:
Paul Dirac and the religion of mathematical beauty
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Abstract:
Paul Dirac is sometimes described as the theorist's theorist. Co-inventor of the most revolutionary scientific theory of the past 150 years, he is now best known for conceiving anti-matter theoretically, before experimenters detected it. Mathematical beauty was ‘almost a religion’ to him, he remarked. In this review of his troubled life and his path-breaking work, I shall look at how this type of beauty became an obsession for him and why he is now regarded as visionary of the modern relationship between geometry and physics.
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