The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom in Science and Inquiry

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The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom

Graham Farmelo

Start date: December 1, 2013

Finish date: December 31, 2013

Discussion: Book Club 2013

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Book Club 2013

December 2013: "The Strangest Man"
By David · 22 posts · 150 views

last updated Jan 03, 2016 10:51AM

June 2013 - Cosmos
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last updated Mar 11, 2014 04:07PM

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May 15, 2017 Charlene rated it liked it

I really don't know how to rate this book. It deserves 5 stars for making Dirac its sole focus and for the portrayal of his personal life. However, there were two aspects of this book that really bothered me, which I will get to in a moment. The author gave an incredibly detailed account of Dirac's personal life. Sometimes when authors include that much detail, they are adding detail for detail's sake. Not so for this book. Every detail of his life was captivating to me. However, and this is the I really don't know how to rate this book. It deserves 5 stars for making Dirac its sole focus and for the portrayal of his personal life. However, there were two aspects of this book that really bothered me, which I will get to in a moment. The author gave an incredibly detailed account of Dirac's personal life. Sometimes when authors include that much detail, they are adding detail for detail's sake. Not so for this book. Every detail of his life was captivating to me. However, and this is the aspect of the book that bothered me most, whenever Farmelo, who himself has a PhD in physics, describe Dirac's work, he practically glossed over it. I have read other books, in which Dirac was not even a main focus, that did a much better job of highlighting his work. Every time Farmelo recounted an amazing achievement of Dirac's I felt as if I had been rushed through it. In fairness to Farmelo, the book was quite long as it was. That made me wonder if he had to choose between focusing on his work or personal life, and chose personal life.

It left me wishing Walter Isaacson had written this biography because I was hoping for a book that was equally rich with personal life and scientific achievement, like Einstein's biography. It is hard to rate a book that is as rich in personal detail as it is empty in detail about method and science.

Another aspect of the book that bothered me came in the afterword, when the author gave his personal opinion about Dirac and his possible autism. I am often fed up with author, and the general public really, labeling smart scientists as autistic. It happens far too often. That actually was *not* the case with this book. I felt that, up until the afterward, the author had made an extremely compelling case that Dirac was solidly on the spectrum. It was a rare case in which I felt the diagnosis was not being abused. However, Farmelo really should have let his prior words speak for themselves. In the afterward, he ranted about autism being caused by genes (there is so much more to it) and then pretty much diagnosed Charles Dirac (Paul's father) with it. Way to ruin what was a great narrative. The author also wondered whether Paul's brother had it as well. I thought that was fine. After all, it's merely speculation. Sadly, his opinions of Charles went well beyond speculation, and I found it annoying.

In the end, I have to conclude that this book was something very special. Many people could write about the science. It's been done so often and so well. The recounting of his personal life, in this book, was far less known and for that reason, this book is a true treasure. His personal relationships were fascinating, and the author brought so many of the characters in Dirac's circle to life. ...more

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Oct 19, 2010 Leilani rated it really liked it

Shelves: science, biography

I hadn't heard of Paul Dirac before reading this biography, but found it really interesting anyway. The first part follows Dirac as he helps shape the beginnings of quantum mechanics during the 1920s and heads toward a Nobel prize. Farmelo does a good job (so far as I can tell) at explaining the most basic concepts behind Dirac's theories for laypeople, and it's fascinating to read about all the famous names interacting with each other - among others Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr, and a mutual a ...more

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