death_date death_place religion birth_place nationality name birth_date residence image article_title birth_name
20 october 1984 tallahassee , florida , usa atheist bristol , gloucestershire , england swiss -rcb- & nbsp ;-lrb- 1902 -- 19 -rrb- -rcb- paul dirac 8 august 1902 united kingdom dirac 4.jpg paul dirac
 paul adrien maurice dirac
paul dirac

paul adrien maurice dirac -lrb- ; 8 august 1902 -- 20 october 1984 -rrb- was an english theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the early development of both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics .
he was the lucasian professor of mathematics at the university of cambridge , a member of the center for theoretical studies , university of miami , and spent the last decade of his life at florida state university .
among other discoveries , he formulated the dirac equation , which describes the behaviour of fermions and predicted the existence of antimatter .
dirac shared the nobel prize in physics for 1933 with erwin schrödinger , `` for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory '' .
he also did work that forms the basis of modern attempts to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics .
he was regarded by his friends and colleagues as unusual in character .
albert einstein said of him , '' `` this balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful '' '' .
his mathematical brilliance , however , means he is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century .
