Contemporary Physics

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Did Dirac predict the positron?

Graham Farmelo

To cite this article: Graham Farmelo (2010) Did Dirac predict the positron?, Contemporary
Physics, 51:2, 97-101, DOI: 10.1080/00107510903217214

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Contemporary Physics
Vol. 51, No. 2, March–April 2010, 97–101

Did Dirac predict the positron?

Graham Farmelo*
Department of Physics, Northeastern University, USA
(Received 24 July 2009; final version received 28 July 2009)

The public have long thought that physicists have the science underlying the story). Most scientists who
something to hide. A century ago, many feared that have commented publicly on the film seem to have
scientists had access to the terrible secret of how to followed suit, no doubt anxious not to be considered
harness nuclear energy and use it to make an explosive spoilsports. But perhaps the release of the film is a
of unprecedented power [1]. Most physicists scoffed at good time for physicists to reflect on their own
the idea, of course; at that time, no one had any idea to understanding of the history of antimatter, one of the
corral this energy. We can now see, however, that the most fundamental discoveries made by physicists in the
fearful had a point: the public knew nothing of the past century.
project to build the first nuclear weapons until The first mention in the media of the harnessing
Hiroshima was blown to smithereens. energy from matter–antimatter annihilation seems to
Unfamiliar or new science has provided the pulp have been made in columns of the New York Times,
fiction novel with many of its potent themes. Dan long before Dan Brown was born. On Sunday 8 May
Brown – a master of the genre, to judge by the sales – 1932, millions of Americans came across it over
chose to focus on the possible mis-use of sub-nuclear breakfast when reading a prominent article ‘The
physics in his multi-million selling Angels and Demons, Atom is Giving up its Mighty Secrets’ by its science
in which a bunch of baddies try to blow up the Vatican editor Waldemar Kaempffert. He had apparently
using a new type of bomb that works by annihilating heard about the idea at the recent meeting in Cleveland
matter with antimatter, thus releasing a huge amount of the American Association for the Advancement of
of energy. Any graduate physicist could have told him Science, where he somehow obtained the impression
that such a weapon is not feasible, simply because it that most physicists were of this view. Yet the evidence
would be impossible to produce a sufficient quantity of is that very few physicists took the notion of an anti-
antimatter, let alone to isolate it in preparation for an electron seriously at that time, even though it had been
explosion. But objections based on well-established suggested a little over a year before by the English
science cut little ice in the world of the mass-market physicist Paul Dirac, then established as one of the
fiction. world’s leading scientists. Most physicists today regard
In Ron Howard’s faithful movie adaptation of that suggestion as the introduction of the very concept
Brown’s hokum, the bad science remains along with of antimatter.
the robotic dialogue. As in the book, the action takes The usual story of the discovery of antimatter is
place mainly in Rome and CERN, the plot lurches reassuringly straightforward: Dirac predicted the anti-
from one crisis to the next. Instead of Brown’s electron in 1931 and Anderson discovered it a year
meretricious prose, we are served up a feast of later, giving theoretical physics one of its greatest
execrable film-making, though some of the cinemato- triumphs. This story is part of the lore of physics,
graphy is first-class. This is one of those action films having been told in hundreds of text books and
that tries so hard to be exciting that it leaves one bored innumerable seminars. However, if the evidence is
to shreds. examined carefully, it is clear that things are not so
The authorities at CERN have wisely decided to be simple. It is true that Dirac claimed to have predicted
good-humoured about the film (a spokesperson there the positron – he did so explicitly in his Nobel Lecture
drew my attention to the filmaker’s good intentions by in December 1933 – but not everyone else agreed. Even
pointing out that the DVD will feature a sequence on his close friend Patrick Blackett, one of the leading

*Email: [email protected]

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DOI: 10.1080/00107510903217214
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98 G. Farmelo

players in the story’s denouement, denied it. He to Dirac, who saw no reason to make the slightest
claimed some 35 years later that Dirac ‘nearly but change to it until Robert Oppenheimer, Wolfgang
not quite predicted the positron’ [2]. Pauli and Hermann Weyl independently pointed out a
Was Blackett correct? To answer the question, we flaw: to be self-consistent, the hole cannot have the
have to go back to the end of 1927, when Dirac same mass as the electron, and so cannot possibly be
discovered his equation for the behaviour of the identified with the proton.
electron. Immediately hailed as a tour de force, and In early 1931, Dirac took the plunge and followed
often likened to a rabbit pulled out of a hat, the the logic of one of his favourite literary characters,
equation became the most talked-about theoretical Sherlock Holmes: ‘When you have eliminated all which
breakthrough in 1928. Not only did the equation is impossible, then whatever remains, however im-
describe the electron in a way that is consistent with probable, must be the truth.’ In this case, the logic
the special theory of relativity and non-relativistic implied that each hole corresponded to a new, hitherto
quantum theory, it accounted for both the spin and the undetected type of particle with the same mass as the
magnetic moment of the particle. But a few months electron. He decided to present his idea, in a paper on a
later, it was clear that, for all the mathematical beauty different subject: the theory of the magnetic monopole.
of the equation, it was diseased – there was no way of Much of the paper is extremely mathematical, but
getting round the fact that it predicted negative energy when Dirac describes – in passing – his thinking on the
levels for a free electron, and that an ordinary positive- new particle, he writes simply and clearly [6]:
energy one would soon fall into one of them. Dirac
knew as well as anyone that this was an extremely A hole, if there were one, would be a new kind of
serious problem, and he knew that the onus was on particle, unknown to experimental physics, having the
him to solve it. same mass and opposite charge to an electron. We may
It took Dirac 2 years to come up with an call such a particle an anti-electron. We should not
expect to find any of them in nature, on account of
explanation [3]. It hinged on the observed fact that their rapid rate of recombination with electrons, but if
electrons obey the Pauli exclusion principle, which says they could be produced experimentally in high vacuum
that each separate quantum state can accommodate they would be quite stable and amenable to
only one electron. He made the extraordinary sugges- observation.
tion that all the negative energy states are full, apart
from a few that are unoccupied. The implication is, as Most text books omit the final sentence in that quote,
Dirac put it [4]: giving an exaggerated impression of Dirac’s confi-
dence. Although he states the properties of the particle
We shall have an infinite number of electrons in with his usual clarity and even names it, he is less
negative-energy states, and indeed an infinite number keen to stress the inevitability of its existence than
per unit volume all over the world, but if their
the difficulty of detecting it. He does, however,
distribution is exactly uniform we should expect them
to be completely unobservable. demonstrate his usual boldness in taking his idea
further by noting that protons ‘will have their own
According to Dirac, we can hope to observe only the negative-energy states, all of which normally are
tiny departures from exact uniformity, arising from occupied, an unoccupied one appearing as an anti-
some of the vacant negative-energy states, which he proton’.
called ‘holes’. By arguing in analogy with the emission Thirty five years later, when the theoretician
of X-rays from many-electron atoms, Dirac reasoned Murray Gell-Mann asked Dirac why he did not
that the motion of each hole in an external electro- come right out and predict anti-particles and urge
magnetic field will be ‘the same as that of the negative- experimenters to hunt for them, Dirac gave his reason
energy electron would fill it, and will thus correspond with his usual terseness: ‘pure cowardice’ [7].
to its charge possessing a charge of þe’. Reasoning in Contrary to common opinion, Dirac was not the
an uncharacteristically hand-waving way, Dirac sug- first to come up with the idea of anti-matter. In the
gested that the hole is the only known particle that has summer of 1898, the Manchester University physicist
the same charge as the electron, the proton (he could Arthur Schuster coined the terms, conceiving a
not explain the difference between their masses). universe made of equal amounts of ‘matter and anti-
Very few physicists took Dirac’s hole theory matter’. Schuster’s idea lacked theoretical underpin-
seriously. The theoretician Victor Weisskopf later ning and did little to encourage others to take it
recalled the idea ‘seemed incredible and unnatural to seriously, so it vanished from view within a decade.
everybody’ [5]. Niels Bohr, godfather of the new Later, in 1925, Einstein used his general theory of
quantum physics, even refused to acknowledge that relativity to suggest the existence of a positively
Dirac had produced a theory at all. Yet it made sense charged electron [8].
 Contemporary Physics 99

Dirac had not heard of Schuster’s ideas or after Anderson’s written by a Caltech theorist Rudolph
Einstein’s. Nor did he do much to promote his own Langer, who concluded that Anderson had discovered
idea of the anti-electron, except on one occasion, in the Dirac’s anti-electron. It seems that, like everyone else,
closing minutes of a series of lectures on quantum Oppenheimer ignored this paper or, at least, did not
mechanics at Princeton University in the autumn of take it seriously. In a chatty letter to his brother a few
1931 (his talks were transcribed by the physicist weeks later, he mentioned that one of the things he was
Banesh Hoffman, whose text Dirac carefully anno- worrying about was ‘Anderson’s positive electrons’
tated). He remarked that anti-electrons should be [11]. It would take another Tolstoy to make narrative
detectable because [9]: sense of the way physicists behave in this story.
From records of the journals stocked in Cambridge
[they] are not to be considered as a mathematical University library, we know for certain that, in the late
fiction; it should be possible to detect them by autumn, readers had ready access to the issue of Science
experimental means.
in which Anderson’s paper was published. But there is
This was the closest Dirac ever came to firmly no sign that Dirac or any of his colleagues – including
predicting the existence of the anti-electron, though Arthur Eddington, Ralph Fowler and Peter Kapitza,
he was careful to add that he thought it unlikely that who all knew about Dirac’s theory – realised that an
the particle would be observed in the near future. It is anti-electron had been photographed in California. We
fairly clear that it did not occur to him that the particle cannot be sure precisely when Dirac heard of Ander-
might show up in the tracks left by cosmic rays, even son’s discovery, but it is reasonable to assume that it
though he knew about these rays not only from was in mid-December (just possibly as late as January
seminars but also, quite frequently, in the columns of 1933) when he was in the Cavendish, working alongside
the New York Times. his friend Blackett who – with his young Italian
He certainly did not press his case: there is no colleague Giuseppe Occhialini – had become the first
record of his ever stating in plain language that the to observe showers of cosmic rays, including wonder-
anti-electron must exist if his theory is correct, nor is fully vivid tracks left by electron–positron pairs [12].
there any evidence that he encouraged experimenters Blackett and Occhialini thanked Dirac for doing the
to hunt for the particle. If he had underlined to others calculations that demonstrated that their observations
the need to look for the anti-electron, then it is likely were consistent with hole theory.
that someone would have pointed out the publication So why was Blackett so adamant when he said in
on p. 387 of the Science News Letter of 19 December 1969 that it is an overstatement to say that Dirac
1931 of a cosmic-ray photograph, featuring a track predicted the positron? Assuming his memory was
that looked like it had been left by the particle Dirac accurate, the most obvious explanation is that Dirac
had predicted (the caption said that the track ‘is did not give him the impression that hole theory had
probably a proton’). led him to expect to see evidence for anti-electrons.
Carl Anderson, a brilliant young experimenter at Also, as Blackett and Anderson independently pointed
the California Institute of Technology, had taken the out, any physicists who took the anti-electron theory
photograph using the cloud chamber he had built on seriously could have done experiments with radioactive
the third floor of the aeronautics laboratory. The sources and discovered the particle in an afternoon. It
taking of the photographs was extremely hard work: is not a plausible defence to say that Dirac was so
most of the time, Anderson’s images showed no cosmic distant from such experiments that he would not have
rays at all. He, however, managed to get some results, thought of this, because he often talked with the
including an especially intriguing track that he photo- experimenters in the Cavendish and attended their
graphed on 2 August 1932. The only way he could seminars much more often than most Cambridge
explain the track was if it were left by a hitherto theorists.
unobserved particle with the same charge as a proton In the first review of the discovery of the positron,
but ‘having a mass comparable with that of the the well-informed experimenter Karl Darrow wrote in
electron’. Anderson braved attacks of cold feet and January 1934 that Dirac’s hole theory had led him ‘to
sent off his paper, snappily entitled ‘The apparent conceive the positive electron’, but Darrow pointedly
existence of easily deflectable positives’ [10]. He did not stopped short of saying that Dirac predicted the
mention Dirac’s theory. This is puzzling because he particle. Indeed, Darrow noted the absence of interest
had just taken a course in advanced quantum in the community for Dirac’s particle by adding ‘no
mechanics given by Robert Oppenheimer, one of one had foreseen the way in which it was eventually
Dirac’s most influential admirers and an expert on found, and no one so far as I know was looking for it’
his hole theory. Oppenheimer will almost certainly have [13]. However, there is one piece of 24-carat evidence
seen a paper in the prominent journal Science soon that does indicate that Dirac took the anti-electron
100 G. Farmelo

extremely seriously, before it showed up in nature. The and that he did so with no clues from experiment. The
evidence is a letter from Igor Tamm, the first Soviet most telling accusation that one could level against
physicist to use quantum mechanics, written to Dirac Dirac is that he did not underline the importance of his
in June 1933. Tamm was full of praise for Dirac’s idea to his colleagues, that he did not urge experi-
achievement in foreseeing the positron, comparing his menters to hunt for the new particles and failed to
friend’s achievement to the brilliant prediction of the appreciate that they might appear in cosmic ray
existence of Neptune. Tamm even implied that Dirac photographs. He certainly seems to have been much
had earlier given up hope that his prediction would be less brave in trumpeting the prediction than one would
verified: ‘your prediction of the existence of the think from reading some accounts of his work. Perhaps
[positron] . . . seemed so extravagant and totally new his extraordinarily shy and taciturn personality was a
that you yourself dared not cling to it and preferred to factor in suppressing what might normally be regarded
abandon the theory’ [14]. Perhaps Tamm’s judgement as natural enthusiasm to promote an important new
was distorted by a wish to flatter his senior colleague, idea (this might explain why Blackett was unconvinced
whom he idolised; there is certainly no other sign that that his friend made the prediction). Also, it is
other physicists toasting to his great achievement at important to bear in mind that the overwhelming
that time. Even in the spring of 1934, when Anderson consensus in the 1920s and early 1930s was that there
was reviewing his work on the anti-electron, he saw no were only two basic particles, the electron and the
reason to link it with Dirac’s theory [15]. It seems that proton. To propose the existence of other particles was
he never much liked being cast in the role of an widely regarded as reckless and contrary to the spirit of
experimenter who merely verified a prediction; rather, Occam’s razor (witness Pauli’s chary postulation of the
he wanted to be viewed as someone who used neutrino, an idea he never wrote up in a publication).
interpretive skill to deduce the apparent existence of So it took courage for Dirac to argue in print for
a hitherto undiscovered particle. the existence of the anti-electron. In the talk he gave in
By the autumn of 1934, the theoretical basis of Princeton in autumn 1931, he makes it clear that he
Dirac’s understanding of the anti-electron was inse- expected the particle to be detected; for most physicists
cure, to say the least. Pauli and Weisskopf demon- this constitutes a prediction, even if it was made in the
strated that Dirac was incorrect to argue that only relative privacy of the lecture theatre. Yet, not all
particles that obey the Pauli exclusion particle could historians would agree. In an article entitled ‘Dirac’s
have anti-particles; spinless particles could have them relativistic electron theory and the so-called prediction
too. Dirac replied calmly and unconvincingly that their of the positron’, the historian Josh Goldman argues
argument was not germane because spinless funda- that it is simplistic to say that Dirac predicted the
mental particles do not appear to exist. positron observed by Anderson, because the narrative
It was not until the late 1930s that it became making the connection between the theory and the
commonplace to tell the now-standard story of Dirac’s experimental observation [18]:
using his theory to make an uniquely bold prediction
that was later verified by Anderson. In 1972, at a looks forward to Anderson’s positrons being seen as
dinner in Trieste to celebrate Dirac’s seventieth birth- the same objects as holes in a sea of negative energy
electrons, but the latter concept has long since been
day, soon after C.P. Snow described him as ‘the
entirely rejected . . ..
greatest living Englishman’, Heisenberg paid Dirac the
lavish compliment of describing the discovery of The nub of this objection is that Dirac foresaw
antimatter’ as ‘perhaps the biggest jump of all the big positrons using a theory that was soon discredited
jumps in physics in our century’ [16]. Thirty years later, (though theoreticians used it for several years after-
on the centenary of Dirac’s birth, the tributes were no wards and still use heuristically). For me, this does
less laudatory. In Nature, the theoretician Kurt little to detract from his achievement. What matters, in
Gottfried wrote with a fitting eloquence [17]: my view, is that he alone was using his strange
combination of reasoning and intuition to assert that
Physics has produced other far-fetched predictions that the anti-electron, and anti-proton, should exist. If one
have subsequently been confirmed by experiment. But wanted to qualify the extent of his achievement, it is
Dirac’s prediction of anti-matter stands alone in being
fair to point out that his reasoning did not apply to
motivated solely by faith in pure theory, without any
hint from data, and yet revealing a deep and universal elementary bosons, only to fermions, which obey the
property of nature. Pauli exclusion principle.
These caveats will do little or nothing to dent
But does Dirac deserve such lavish praise? There is no Dirac’s reputation as the theoretician who firmly
doubt that Dirac used his hole theory to suggest the predicted the existence of anti-matter – at one time,
existence of the anti-electron (and the anti-proton), half the entire universe – using pure thought.
 Contemporary Physics 101

The truth, in so far as we know it, is not quite so simple [8] See A. Fölsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography, Viking,
and is stranger and more compelling than fiction, and a New York, 1997, pp. 563–565.
[9] P.A.M. Dirac, Lectures on quantum mechanics. Prince-
better story than Dan Brown’s. ton University. In the Dirac Papers, Dirac Library,
Florida State University, file 2/26/15.
Notes on contributor [10] C.D. Anderson, The apparent existence of easily
deflectable positives, Science 76 (1932), pp. 238–239.
Graham Farmelo, Adjunct Professor of Physics at North-
[11] A.K. Smith and C. Weiner (eds.), Robert Oppenheimer:
eastern University, is author of The Strangest Man: the
Letters and Recollections, Stanford University Press,
Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, London, Faber & Faber, 2009.
Stanford, 1980, p. 159.
[12] X. Roqué, The manufacture of the positron, Stud. Philos.
Mod. Phys. 28 (1997), pp. 73–129.
References [13] K. Darrow, Discovery and early history of the
[1] S. Weart, Nuclear Fear, Harvard University Press, positive electron, Sci. Monthly, January (1934), pp. 5–
Cambridge, MA, 1988; Chapter 5. 14, see p. 5.
[2] P. Blackett, The old days of the Cavendish, Rivista del [14] I.Y. Tamm letter to Dirac, 5 June 1933, in
Cimento I (special edition) (1969), p. xxxvii. A. Kojevnikov. Paul Dirac and Igor Tamm Correspon-
[3] M. De Maria and A. Russo, The discovery of the positron, dence Part II: 1928–1933, Munich, Max Planck Institute
Rivista di Storia Dell Scienza 2 (1985), pp. 237–286. (preprint).
[4] P.A.M. Dirac, A theory of electrons and protons, Proc. [15] C. Anderson, The Positron, Nature 3357 (1934), pp.
Roy. Soc. (London) A 126 (1930), pp. 360–365, see p. 361. 313–316.
[5] V. Weisskopf, Growing up with the field theory: the [16] W. Heisenberg. The Physicist’s Conception of Nature,
development of quantum electrodynamics, in The Birth of J. Mehra, ed., D Reidel Publishing Company, Boston
Particle Physics, Cambridge University Press, Cam- p. 271.
bridge, 1986. cit. 56 on p. 64. [17] K. Gottfried, Matter all in the mind, Nature 419 (2002),
[6] P.A.M. Dirac, Quantised singularities in the electromag- p. 117.
netic field, Proc. Roy. Soc. (London) A 133 (1933), pp. [18] J.D. Goldman, Dirac’s relativistic electron theory and
60–72, see p. 61. the so-called prediction of the positron, MSc disserta-
[7] M. Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar, Little, Brown tion, Imperial College of Science and Technology,
& Co, London, 1994, p. 179. London, 2005.