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Naming three Nobel prizewinners in physics last week, the Swedish Academy of Science paid tribute to the ability of young men and the importance of small things. Oldest of the three prizemen is Dr. Erwin Schrodinger, 46, who shares this year's award with Dr. Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac. Dr. Dirac is only 31, as is Dr. Werner Heisenberg, to whom went the belated 1932 award.* All three have been busy prying into the unimaginably small interior of the atom...
Wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are different mathematical expressions of the same theory. A third description of electron behavior, which strengthened rather than contradicted the other two representations, was contributed by last week's third prizewinner, Cambridge University's brilliant young Dr. Dirac. Also, long before lightweight protons or "positrons" were experimentally observed by Caltech's Dr. Carl David Anderson (TIME, March 6), Dr. Dirac had declared such particles to be required by mathematical necessity. But this shy, angular youngster with small Wack eyes and small black mustache, already a big frog in the subatomic puddle, made...
Last week's announcement won instant acclaim. One acclaimer was Cambridge's Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac who, now only 31, three years ago startled his learned compatriots by declaring that nuclear protons were simply "holes" in the circumambient electronic field. "A major ad-ance!" cried Dr. Dirac...
Cambridge's "positron" is a particle of positive electricity no heavier than the particle of negative electricity called the electron. Protons, heretofore considered the smallest unit of positive electricity, weigh 1,850 times as much as electrons. Cambridge's Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac long ago declared that mathematical necessities require the existence of light-weight protons. Last year Caltech's Carl David Anderson noticed some ion tracks which implied impacts from Theorist Dirac's light protons. Before the Royal Society last fortnight, Dr. P. M. S. Blackett, 35, tall, pale member of Lord Rutherford...