Paul Dirac, who died in November 1984, was known
to the world as the developer of the mathematics of
the quantum mechanical theory—in effect the physics
of the smallest part of the atom. He received his initial
education, however, not in the field of mathematics,
but in that of electrical engineering. Though he
obtained a first-class degree at the Merchant
Venturers Technical College, he did not excel in this
subject. As J.G.Crowther wrote in his obituary: “His
teachers did not consider him a genius.” (The Muslim,
Islamabad, November 23, 1984).
It was only when he entered the mathematics
department of Bristol University, and then went on
to St. John’s College to continue his studies in the
same field, that “it was perceived that he had
extraordinary intellectual powers.”
In the field of mathematics, Dirac was on homeground.
His success as a physical mathematician was
phenomenal. Following Werner Heisenberg’s
publication of the idea of a new quantum mechanics in
1925, Dirac independently went to work on creating an
appropriate new mathematics for handling it. The
result was his p-q number theory, completed in 1928, a
“highly original and extremely elegant mathematical
technique” in which “he showed how the theories of
quantum mechanics and relativity could be combined.”
In 1930 he published his textbook of quantum
mechanics, which immediately became a classic. In
1932, at the incredibly early age of 30, he was appointed
Lucrasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge
University, the chair Sir Isaac Newton had once
occupied—a fitting post for one whom Niels Bohr
called “the most remarkable scientific mind since
Newton.”
Dirac was not successful in electrical engineering,
but when he entered his own domain—
mathematics—he thrived and showed amazingly
innovative genius. Like Dirac, everyone has a
domain of his own in which he can excel. Failure in
one field is no reason to lose hope: there is always
another field awaiting one, in which the flower of
one’s destiny can flourish and thrive.
Ref - The Moral Vision
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
