Paul Dirac, 1902 — 1984, was a theoretician physicist.
Paul DIRAC was famous enough to have his name in the Petit Larousse (my edition is from 1981, before his death) where he is presented as one of the creator of quantum mechanics. One can find his biography here.
For the mathematician, the name of Dirac is attached to two closely linked notions : the Dirac measure and the Dirac distribution. These notions are a good example of how ideas come from physics and can be developed by mathematicians who, spending all their time to computations and logic, don't fundamentally care about origin and use of these computations.
The one who has the A-level in sciences knows that the polynomial x2+1 has no real root and that the notion of complex number allows nevertheless to find a mathematical object x which verifies x2+1=0. The one who has the A-level in sciences knows also that a function is certainly not derivable at x if this function is not continuous at x. The Dirac distribution is the mathematical object which appears as the derivative of a function having simple discontinuities. Unfortunately, a mathematical level of at least A-level+3 is needed for a full understanding of all concepts leading to the notion of distribution.
P. M.
(alphacode : dirac ; numcode : 129)
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