Professor Paul Dirac, c mid-20th century

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, born 8 August 1902, died 20 October 1984. Dirac was an English mathematician and theoretical physicist, considered one of the founders of quantum physics. He is best-known for laying the foundations for quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory. He also is known for his Dirac equation (1928). Dirac was awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger for "the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory". Dirac studied at the University of Bristol and graduated with first class honours in electrical engineering in 1921, and mathematics in 1923. He then attended the University of Cambridge, graduating with a PhD in physics in 1926, having written the first ever thesis on quantum mechanics. In 1937, he married Margit Wigner and raised her two children from her prior marriage as if they were his own. They also had two daughters together. Dirac worked as a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1932 to 1969. He then moved in 1969 to the University of Miami and Florida State University. Dirac died in Tallahassee, Florida in 1984, aged 82. Dirac received many awards, as well as the Nobel Prize, he was awarded the Royal Medal (1939), the Copley Medal (1952), and the Max Planck Medal (1952). He also turned down a knighthood. He is considered amongst modern scientists, such as Stephen Hawking, to have been one of the greatest physicists of all time, bar Albert Einstein.