Paul Dirac: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

He formulated the Dirac equation, one of the most important results in physics, in 1928. It connected special relativity and quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of antimatter. He wrote a famous paper in 1931, which further predicted the existence of antimatter. Dirac also contributed greatly to the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics. He contributed to Fermi–Dirac statistics, which describes the behaviour of fermions, particles with half-integer spin. His 1930 monograph, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics, is one of the most influential texts on the subject. He and Schrödinger tied for eighth in a Physics World poll of the greatest physicists of all time.

In 1987, Abdus Salam declared that "Dirac was undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists of this or any century ... No man except Einstein has had such a decisive influence, in so short a time, on the course of physics in this century." In 1995, Stephen Hawking stated that "Dirac has done more than anyone this century, with the exception of Einstein, to advance physics and change our picture of the universe" while Stanley Deser remarked that "We all stand on Dirac's shoulders."