"RANKS AMONG THE HIGHEST ACHIEVEMENTS OF 20TH-CENTURY SCIENCE": 1928 FIRST EDITION OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE "DIRAC EQUATION"

DIRAC, P.A.M. The Quantum Theory of the Electron. IN: Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A, Vol. 117, No. A778, pp. 610-24. London: Royal Society, February 1, 1928. Octavo, original gray paper wrappers. Housed in a custom chemise and clamshell box.

First edition of the discovery of the "Dirac Equation," in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society where it originally appeared. "When the equation appeared in print at the beginning of February [1928], it was a sensation… the consensus was that Dirac had done something remarkable, the theorists' equivalent of a hole in one" (Farmelo, The Strangest Man).

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was an English theoretical physicist and one of the founders of quantum mechanics. "Dirac's outstandingly significant achievement was his relativistic wave equation for the electron, published early in 1928… Sir Nevill Mott has described it as 'the most beautiful and exciting piece of theoretical physics that I have seen in my lifetime—comparable with Maxwell's deduction that the displacement current, and therefore electromagnetism, must exist.' An even more remarkable prediction from Dirac's equation was the existence of an 'anti-electron,' as Dirac termed it in 1931, with the same mass value as the electron but opposite charge. It was first observed in the cosmic radiation in 1932 and was later named the 'positron.' It was the first of the many antiparticles which later became well established. Dirac's name is also well known for work on many other topics, such as magnetic monopoles, the Large Numbers Hypothesis, the separation of isotopes by diffusion and centrifuge processes (work done during World War II), and the quantization of constrained dynamical systems… Dirac was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1930 and Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University in 1932. In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize [for Physics], jointly with [Erwin] Schrödinger, for their discoveries in quantum mechanics" (DNB).

"The relativistic wave equation of the electron ranks among the highest achievements of 20th-century science" (Pais, Inward Bound, 290). While the paper was in press, "Dirac wrote to Max Born in Göttingen, not mentioning his new equation except in a ten-line postscript, where he spelt out the reasoning that had led to it. Born showed these words to his colleagues, who regarded the equation as 'an absolute wonder.' Jordan and Wigner, who were working on the problem that Dirac had solved, were flabbergasted. Jordan, seeing his rival walk off with the prize, sank into depression. When the equation appeared in print at the beginning of February, it was a sensation. Though most physicists struggled to understand the equation in all its mathematical complexities, the consensus was that Dirac had done something remarkable, the theorists' equivalent of a hole in one. For the first time in his career, [Dirac] had shown that he was capable of tackling one of the toughest problems of the day and beating his competitors to the solution, hands down. The American theoretician John Van Vleck later likened Dirac's explanation of electron spin to 'a magician's extraction of rabbits from a silk hat.' John Slater, soon to be a colleague of Van Vleck's at Harvard, was even more effusive: 'we can hardly conceive of anyone else having thought of [the equation]. It shows the peculiar power of the sort of intuitive genius which he has possessed more than perhaps any of the other scientists of the period'" (Farmelo, The Strangest Man, 143-44).

Expert repair to spine head. Near-fine condition in the original wrappers.