What is an Electron? Dirac Lecture 2015

The annual Dirac Lecture will be given by Professor Sir Michael Atiyah this year, and will take place on Monday 11 May at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge. The lecture is entitled What is an electron?

The Dirac Lecture, established jointly by St John's College and the University of Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, is part of the Dirac Lecture series, named after the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. This lecture will discuss what we can learn from Dirac, and how he might help us answer the question in the title of the lecture.

Professor Sir Michael AtiyahProfessor Sir Michael Atiyah is an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and has been Master at Trinity College, President of the Royal Society, and Chancellor of the University of Leicester. He has made fundamental contributions to mathematics, with some of his major achievements being the development of the topological K-theory, index theory, and gauge theory. His work has provided a greater insight into quantum field theory and general relativity, and he has received many awards and honours, including a knighthood in 1983, an Order of Merit in 1992, and the Abel Prize in 2004.

Paul Dirac came to St John’s in 1923 to read for a PhD in Mathematical Physics, and was a Fellow of the College until his death in 1984. He made valuable contributions to the early development of quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 jointly with Erwin Schrödinger “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory.”

The Dirac Lecture will take place in the Wolfson Room (MR2), Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, at 4pm on Monday 11 May. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Electron photo credit: Peter Zuco on Flickr.