Editing Paul Dirac (section)

===Education===
Dirac was educated first at [[Bishop Road Primary School]]<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|pp=13–17}}</ref> and then at the all-boys [[Society of Merchant Venturers|Merchant Venturers']] Technical College (later [[Cotham School]]), where his father was a French teacher.<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|pp=20–21}}</ref> The school was an institution attached to the [[University of Bristol]], which shared grounds and staff.<ref name="Mehra18"/> It emphasised technical subjects like bricklaying, shoemaking and metalwork, and modern languages.<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|p=23}}</ref> This was unusual at a time when secondary education in Britain was still dedicated largely to the classics, and something for which Dirac would later express his gratitude.<ref name="Mehra18">{{harvnb|Mehra|1972|p=18}}</ref> One of his peers at Bishop Road School was Archibald Leach, later famous as [[Cary Grant]].{{sfnp| Farmelo| 2009| p=14}}

Dirac studied [[electrical engineering]] on a City of Bristol University Scholarship at the University of Bristol's engineering faculty, which was co-located with the Merchant Venturers' Technical College.<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|p=28}}</ref> Shortly before he completed his degree in 1921, he sat for the entrance examination for [[St John's College, Cambridge]]. He passed and was awarded a £70 scholarship, but this fell short of the amount of money required to live and study at Cambridge. Despite having graduated with a [[first class honours]] Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering, the economic climate of the [[Post–World War I recession|post-war depression]] was such that he was unable to find work as an engineer. Instead, he took up an offer to study for a [[Bachelor of Arts]] degree in mathematics at the University of Bristol free of charge. He was permitted to skip the first year of the course owing to his engineering degree.<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|pp=46–47}}</ref> Under the influence of Peter Fraser, whom Dirac called the best mathematics teacher, he had the most interest in projective geometry, and began applying it to the geometrical version of relativity [[Hermann Minkowski|Minkowski]] developed.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Galison |first=Peter |date=2000 |title=The Suppressed Drawing: Paul Dirac's Hidden Geometry |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2902912 |journal=Representations |issue=72 |pages=145–166 |doi=10.2307/2902912 |jstor=2902912 |issn=0734-6018}}</ref>

In 1923, Dirac graduated, once again with first class honours, and received a £140 scholarship from the [[Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (United Kingdom)|Department of Scientific and Industrial Research]].<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|p=53}}</ref> Along with his £70 scholarship from St John's College, this was enough to live at Cambridge. There, Dirac pursued his interests in the theory of [[general relativity]], an interest he had gained earlier as a student in Bristol, and in the nascent field of [[quantum physics]], under the supervision of [[Ralph Fowler]].<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|pp=52–53}}</ref> From 1925 to 1928 he held an [[1851 Research Fellowship]] from the [[Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851]].<ref name="1851 Royal Commission Archives">1851 Royal Commission Archives</ref> He completed his PhD in June 1926 with the first thesis on quantum mechanics to be submitted anywhere.<ref>{{harvnb|Farmelo|2009|p=101}}</ref> He then continued his research in [[Copenhagen]] and [[Göttingen]].<ref name="1851 Royal Commission Archives"/> In the spring of 1929, he was a visiting professor at the [[University of Wisconsin–Madison]].<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Kursunoglu |editor1-first=Behram N. |editor2-last=Wigner |editor2-first=Eugene Paul |title=Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac: Reminiscences about a Great Physicist |date=1990 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0521386888 |page=132 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1Pg7t9a_AX4C&q=paul+dirac+university+of+wisconsin+1929&pg=PA132 |access-date=30 September 2020}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac |url=https://pages.hep.wisc.edu/~ldurand/715html/courseinfo/biographies/dirac.html |publisher=University of Wisconsin-Madison |access-date=30 September 2020}}</ref>