GOING PLACES ON HOME GROUND

Going Places on Home Ground ~ 188 ~ GOING PLACES ON HOME GROUND Paul Dirac, who died in November 1984, was known to the world as the developer of the mathematics of the quantum mechanical theory—in effect the physics of the smallest part of the atom. He received his initial education, however, not in the field of mathematics, but in that of electrical engineering. Though he obtained a first-class degree at the Merchant Venturers Technical College, he did not excel in this subject. As J.G.Crowther wrote in his obituary: “His teachers did not consider him a genius.” (The Muslim, Islamabad, November 23, 1984). It was only when he entered the mathematics department of Bristol University, and then went on to St. John’s College to continue his studies in the same field, that “it was perceived that he had extraordinary intellectual powers.” In the field of mathematics, Dirac was on homeground. His success as a physical mathematician was phenomenal. Following Werner Heisenberg’s publication of the idea of a new quantum mechanics in