EVERYONE IS INVITED. BUT ENTER IF YOU DARE . . .
DIRAC-ULA RETURNS ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23ᴿᴰ FROM 5 – 7 PM AT THE DIRAC SCIENCE LIBRARY COURTYARD!
Last year, you all joined FSU Libraries for popcorn, pumpkin sun-catcher painting, photos with Count Dirac-ula, and so much more . . . But BEWARE — the 5th Annual Dirac-ula Fall Festival is about to be terrifyingly bigger and better than ever before!
Come one, come all to our 5TH ANNUAL DIRAC-ULA FALL FESTIVAL! Dirac-ula is our yearly tradition where we dress up the Paul Dirac statue as “Count Dirac-ula” and celebrate his contributions to FSU & the field of Physics. There will be GAMES, SNACKS, PRIZES, FACE PAINTING, A PHOTOBOOTH, AND MORE! We anticipate so much fun, it’s SCARY.
Emily McClellan-Lopez, the visionary genius behind the festival and FSU Libraries Student Engagement Coordinator, reflected on how it all began and what is yet to come:
“Going into my 5th year of planning this event, I wanted to make this year ultra special. My first year, I planned this event after hearing about an old campus tradition of students dressing up the Paul Dirac statue as ‘Dirac-ula,’ while originally planning to fulfill my goal of hosting a Halloween-themed festival. So many campus partners were excited to hear we were bringing Dirac-ula back, and new students ended up loving the event.
I wanted to make this a more permanent tradition here at FSU by solidifying this as more than just dressing him up, but by hosting an event each year and incorporating elements where students can learn about who he was.
Over the last 5 years, we had one student who attended the festival every year they were a student here. This year, our Special Collections & Archive Team will be at the event showing copies of some of Dirac’s personal items we have in our collection. We’ll also be giving out Paul Dirac keepsake cards where students can learn more about who he was.”
DIRAC — DID YOU DROP THIS, KING? 👑
PAUL DIRAC was a British theoretical physicist and a key figure in the founding of quantum mechanics. Did you know he once held the same academic position as Isaac Newton, and worked alongside legends like Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking?
Dirac wasn’t just a revolutionary and Nobel Prize-winning physicist, underrepresented for his contributions to quantum mechanics, but he was also a thoroughly kind-hearted and good-natured man. Unlike his famously outgoing and social colleagues, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, Dirac gets little credit for his work due to his solitary nature. He was called a “man of few words,” by his colleagues who maintained a running joke defining a “Dirac” as one word per hour, and he famously told an interviewer that he didn’t talk much. Although his life and personality were little known, Dirac was a dedicated family man and a good friend.
DIRAC’S LIFE STORY and social growth is primarily narrated throughout the personal notes he wrote to family and friends, which he preserved and kept orderly. In an early letter to a close friend, Dirac wrote that, “to defend himself against the hostilities he perceived around him he retreated into his own imagination (Westmoreland, 2019).” The contrast between this note and his future interviews demonstrate Dirac’s growth, as he was frequently seen in interviews throughout his later years. After his death, a biography “The Strangest Man (2009)” was written about his low-key life, story, and personality.
As a result of this purposeful reclusivity, Paul Dirac was seen as a humble and shy scientist until around his 30’s. In 1937, at 35 years old, Dirac married his wife, Margit Wigner. Dirac met Wigner in 1934 while on sabbatical at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She had two children from her past marriage three years before. When Dirac married Margit Wigner, he became a family man. He was fully dedicated to his new wife and kids, taking on the role of a very involved and caring father. Right around the time of his marriage, a shift in Dirac’s behavior and socialization was noted by those around him. He became more social, as Margit’s bubbly personality rubbed off on him.
DIRAC’S DISCOVERIES were equally as important as other, more well known scientists, establishing entirely new bounds in the study of physics with implications across other fields of science like cosmology, geology, and chemistry. The Dirac Equation (1928), explained the mechanical behavior of electrons, predicted the existence of antimatter, and discovered the positron. He also contributed to quantum mechanics, formulating a new field of quantum mechanics: quantum electrodynamics, and introducing new mathematical tools such as the Dirac delta function.
FROM HIS DEDICATION to his wife and family, and to his revolutionary contributions to science and the way we understand the world, Paul Dirac brought positivity all around him and should be remembered for not only his mind, but also his humble and kind personality; perhaps in such regard that Stephen Hawking delivered a speech at his funeral. We are so lucky to have had him at Florida State University.
That’s why we celebrate him every October at DIRAC-ULA! Don’t miss out on face-painting, snow cones, popcorn, games, prizes, and more at our 5th annual Dirac celebration in front of the Dirac Science Library. If not for the games and prizes, show up for his legacy!
Written by Amber-Lynne Jensen, Student Engagement Associate & Claire King, Student Engagement Assistant.
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