TheStrangestMan

The Strangest Man The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius GRAHAM FARMELO To my mother and the memory of my late father Contents Prologue The Strangest Man Abbreviations in Notes Notes Bibliography List of Plates Acknowledgements Index [T]he amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. JOHN STUART MILL, On Liberty, 1869 We are nothing without the work of others our predecessors, others our teachers, others our contemporaries. Even when, in the measure of our inadequacy and our fullness, new insight and new order are created, we are still nothing without others. Yet we are more. J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, Reith Lecture, 20 December 1953 Prologue [A] good deal of unkindness and selfishness on the part of parents towards children is not generally followed by ill consequences to the parents themselves. They may cast a gloom over their children’s lives for many years. SAMUEL BUTLER, The Way of All Flesh, 1903 All it took was a single glass of orange j......