ALL THE BLOOD OF ONE’S BODY

All the Blood of One’s Body ~ 205 ~ ALL THE BLOOD OF ONE’S BODY Professor Paul Dirac died in Florida, U.S.A., in October 1984 at the age of 84. Recipient of the Nobel Prize and many other awards, he was considered after Newton and Einstein—the greatest scientist of modern theory—in effect the physics of the smallest part of the atom—and his effective prediction of anti-matter before it had been experimentally discovered. His “anti-matter” and “anti-universe” became the leading physical ideas for explaining the character and contents of the contemporary universe, its origin and history. J.G. Crowther’s obituary to Dirac in The Guardian (November 4, 1984) was fittingly given the headline “Prophet of the Anti-universe.” Dirac’s discovery of the first anti-particle, known as a positron, revolutionized the world of nuclear physics. Students were naturally interested to know how he arrived at this world-shaking discovery. His answers often proved somewhat disconcerting. “When people asked him how he got his startling ideas about the nature of sub-atomic matter,” Crowther writes, “he would patiently explain that