Lectures on Quantum Mechanics and Relativistic Field Theory

Book excerpt: 2012 Reprint of 1955 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Dirac is widely regarded as one of the world's greatest physicists. He was one of the founders of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. His early contributions include the modern operator calculus for quantum mechanics, which he called transformation theory, and an early version of the path integral. His relativistic wave equation for the electron was the first successful attack on the problem of relativistic quantum mechanics. Dirac founded quantum field theory with his reinterpretation of the Dirac equation as a many-body equation, which predicted the existence of antimatter and matter-antimatter annihilation. He was the first to formulate quantum electrodynamics, although he could not calculate arbitrary quantities because the short distance limit requires renormalization. Dirac discovered the magnetic monopole solutions, the first topological configuration in physics, and used them to give the modern explanation of charge quantization. He developed constrained quantization in the 1960s, identifying the general quantum rules for arbitrary classical systems. These lectures were given delivered and published during his tenure at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study in the 1930's.