The English physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) formulated a most general type of quantum mechanics and a relativistic wave equation for the electron which led to the prediction of positive electrons, the first known forms of antimatter.

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born on Aug. 8, 1902, at Monk Royal in Bristol, England, the son of Charles Adrien Ladislas Dirac and Florence Hannah Holten Dirac. Paul received his secondary education at the old Merchant Venturers' College and, at the age of 16, entered Bristol University. He graduated 3 years later in electrical engineering. Unable to find employment, he studied mathematics for 2 years before moving to Cambridge as a research student and recipient of an 1851 Exhibition scholarship award. His student years (1923-1926) at Cambridge saw the emergence of the mathematical formulation of modern atomic physics in the hands of Louis de Broglie, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and Max Born. It...