The Strangest Man
€19.90
Product Information
| ISBN | 9780571222865 |
|---|---|
| Publisher | |
| Publishing Date | 24/12/2009 |
| Price (excl. tax) | €18.77 |
| Tax | €1.13 |
| Price (incl. tax) | €19.90 |
| Availability | 15 units in external warehouse |
Product Description
''A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.'' Michael Frayn
The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac, the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity, his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather.
Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac''s massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.
The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story, as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history.
''A wonderful book . . . Moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.'' Lord Waldegrave, Daily Telegraph