The Strangest Man Reviews
"Starred Review. Farmelo proves himself a wizard at explaining the arcane aspects of particle physics. His great affection for his odd but brilliant subject shows on every page, giving Dirac the biography any great scientist deserves." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Paul Dirac was a giant of 20th-century physics, and this rich, satisfying biography does him justice. [A] nuanced portrayal of an introverted eccentric who held his own in a small clique of revolutionary scientific geniuses." - Kirkus Reviews
"Graham Farmelo has done a splendid job of portraying Dirac and his world. The biography is a major achievement." - Peter Higgs, Times (UK)
"If Newton was the Shakespeare of British physics, Dirac was its Milton, the most fascinating and enigmatic of all our great scientists. And he now has a biography to match his talents: a wonderful book by Graham Farmelo. The story it tells is moving, sometimes comic, sometimes infinitely sad, and goes to the roots of what we mean by truth in science." - Telegraph
"A marvelously rich and intimate study." - New Statesman
"Of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionized physics almost a century ago, he truly stands out. Paul Dirac was a strange man in a strange world. This biography, long overdue, is most welcome." - The Economist
"Regardless of whether Dirac was autistic or simply unpleasant, he is an icon of modern thought and Farmelo's book gives us a genuine insight into his life and times." - New Scientist
"Farmelo is very good at portraying this locked-in, asocial creature, often with an eerie use of the future-perfect tense, which has the virtue of putting the reader in the same room with people who are long gone." - Los Angeles Times
"This biography is a gift. It is both wonderfully written (certainly not a given in the category Accessible Biographies of Mathematical Physicists) and a thought-provoking meditation on human achievement, limitations and the relations between the two. [T]he most satisfying and memorable biography I have read in years." - New York Times Book Review
"Paul Dirac won a Nobel Prize for Physics at 31. He was one of quantum mechanics’ founding fathers, an Einstein-level genius. He was also virtually incapable of having normal social interactions. Graham Farmelo’s biography explains Dirac’s mysterious life and work." - Time Magazine
"Farmelo did not pick the easiest biography to write - its subject lived a largely solitary life in deep thought. But Dirac was also beset with tragedy and in that respect, the author proposes some novel insights into what shaped the man." - Library Journal
"[A] highly readable and sympathetic biography of the taciturn British physicist who can be said, with little exaggeration, to have invented modern theoretical physics. The book is a real achievement, alternately gripping and illuminating." - American Scientist
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Costa Book Awards, 2009
