Sunday, January 10, 2010

Graham Farmelo Revising Dirac's Biography?

This is just a short article on Graham Farmelo and his quest to finish his award-winning biography of P.A.M. Dirac. What caught my eye was what was written at the end of the article:

And the late scientist is still springing new surprises on his biographer: "Genius is posthumous productivity. Last summer I found out that he had anticipated arguably the greatest discovery in theoretical physics of the 1990s so I had to redo that part of the book." Which means he's stuck with Dirac for the rest of his life? "Suits me," Farmelo says.


So I had to think back a little bit harder on what could this "... greatest discovery in theoretical physics of the 1990s... " could be? The only thing I can come up with is the discovery of "magnetic monopoles" in spin ice this past summer. I've covered this previously in this blog, and this blog entries.

Other than that, off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that would be significant enough for Farmelo to make such addition to what is essentially a very new book. Can anyone come up with an idea?

Zz.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Just off the top of my head, could it be the discovery of the top quark?

Anonymous said...

It wouldn't be that; Dirac didn't predict the Top quark.