The first of
these is antimatter, predicted by the British theoretical physicist Dirac in
1928 when he was developing an equation to describe the behaviour of the
electron. |
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Dirac was a very
shy man; you see it in his demeanour as he gives a lecture. However the
respect in which he is held is shown by his plaque in Westminster Abbey,
placed there in 1995, which is reputedly the only equation in the Abbey. |
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For Dirac the
equation was obvious; however he could only find a solution to it describing
the behaviour of the electron if there was also another solution which seemed
to describe something with negative energy. This solution he eventually
ascribed to the positron, the antiparticle of the electron. |