'A monumental achievement - one of the great scientific biographies.' Michael Frayn The Strangest Man is the Costa Biography Award-winning account of Paul Dirac the famous physicist sometimes called the British Einstein. He was one of the leading pioneers of the greatest revolution in twentieth-century science: quantum mechanics. The youngest theoretician ever to win the Nobel Prize for Physics he was also pathologically reticent strangely literal-minded and legendarily unable to communicate or empathize. Through his greatest period of productivity his postcards home contained only remarks about the weather. Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and work. Farmelo shows a man who while hopelessly socially inept could manage to love and sustain close friendship. The Strangest Man is an extraordinary and moving human story as well as a study of one of the most exciting times in scientific history. 'A wonderful book . . . Moving sometimes comic sometimes infinitely sad and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science.' Lord Waldegrave Daily Telegraph
