born Aug. 8, 1902, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.
died Oct. 20, 1984, Tallahassee, Fla., U.S.
English mathematician and theoretical physicist.
His first major contribution, in 192526, was a general and logically simple form of quantum mechanics. About the same time, he developed ideas of Enrico Fermi which led to Fermi-Dirac statistics . He then applied Albert Einstein 's special theory of relativity to the quantum mechanics of the electron and showed that the electron must have spin of 1 2 . His theory also revealed new states later identified with the positron. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics with Erwin Schrödinger . In 1932 Dirac was appointed to the Lucasian mathematics professorship at the University of Cambridge, a chair once occupied by Isaac Newton . He retired from Cambridge in 1968 and became professor emeritus at Florida State University in 1971.