A Quote by Paul Dirac

It was not until some weeks later that I realized there is no need to restrict oneself to 2 by 2 matrices. One could go on to 4 by 4 matrices, and the problem is then easily soluable. In retrospect, it seems strange that one can be so much held up over such an elementary point. The resulting wave equation for the electron turned out to be very successful. It led to correct values for the spin and the magnetic moment. This was quite unexpected. The work all followed from a study of pretty mathematics, without any thought being given to these physical properties of the electron.

Paul Dirac

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Any Being Correct Could Easily Electron Elementary Equation Followed Given Go Held I Realized Later Led Magnetic Mathematics Moment Much Need Oneself Out Over Physical Point Pretty Problem Properties Quite Realized Restrict Retrospect Seems Some Spin Strange Study Successful Then Thought Turned Unexpected Until Up Values Very Wave Weeks Without Work

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Paul Dirac
British - Physicist
August 8, 1902 - October 20, 1984

Though determinants and matrices received a great deal of attention in the nineteenth century and thousands of papers were written on these subjects, they do not constitute great innovations in mathematics.... Neither determinants nor matrices have influenced deeply the course of mathematics despite their utility as compact expressions and despite the suggestiveness of matrices as concrete groups for the discernment of general theorems of group theory.

Morris Kline

According to well-known electrodynamic laws, an electron moving in a magnetic field is acted upon by a force which runs perpendicular to the direction of motion of the electron and to the direction of the magnetic field, and whose magnitude is easily determined.

Pieter Zeeman

The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity... the rigid electron is no working hypothesis, but a working hindrance. Approaching Maxwell's equations with the concept of the rigid electron seems to me the same thing as going to a concert with your ears stopped up with cotton wool. We must admire the courage and the power of the school of the rigid electron which leaps across the widest mathematical hurdles with fabulous hypotheses, with the hope to land safely over there on experimental-physical ground.

Hermann Minkowski

It is my experience that proofs involving matrices can be shortened by 50% if one throws the matrices out.

Emil Artin

The magnetic cleavage of the spectral lines is dependent on the size of the charge of the electron, or, more accurately, on the ratio between the mass and the charge of the electron.

Pieter Zeeman

When you look back on a historical period of music, it seems so obvious to you what the characteristics of it are, but they're not obvious at the time. So, when I look back at my own work, I could easily write a very convincing sort of account of it that made it look like I had planned it all out from day one and that this led logically to that and then I did this and then that followed quite naturally from that. But that's not how it felt.

Brian Eno

We have learnt through experience that when an electrical ray strikes the surface of an atom, an electron, and in some circumstances a second and even a third electron, can be detached.

Johannes Stark

Crystallographers believed in X-ray results, which are of course very accurate. But the x-rays are limited, and electron microscopy filled the gap, and so the discovery of quasicrystals could have been discovered only by electron microscopy, and the community of crystallographers, for several years, was not willing to listen.

Dan Shechtman

The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron .... The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.

Stephen Hawking

There was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered. No familiar conceptions can be woven around the electron; it belongs to the waiting list.

Arthur Eddington

In the absence of a magnetic field the period of all these oscillations is the same. But as soon as the electron is exposed to the effect of a magnetic field, its motion changes.

Pieter Zeeman

The electron is first of all your concept of the electron.

Nhat Hanh

Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?

Wernher von Braun

It is a fascinating fact that father and son have given the most striking evidence for the apparently contradictory properties of the electron: the father proving its character as a particle, the son its character as a wave... Thomson was extremely proud of his son's success and tried to assimilate the new results into his old convictions.

Max Born

I used to say the evening that I developed the first x-ray photograph I took of insulin in 1935 was the most exciting moment of my life. But the Saturday afternoon in late July 1969, when we realized that the insulin electron density map was interpretable, runs that moment very close.

Dorothy Hodgkin

If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one.

Richard Hamming

A Quote by Paul Dirac

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