Remodelled Dirac Science Library opened at FSU

Last Thursday evening, the remodelled Dirac Science Library at Florida State University was formally opened, with Graham as guest speaker at the ceremony. The Library, first  opened in 1989 by Dirac’s wife Manci, now has 250 additional seats and a host of new facilities, including large wireless displays for collaborative work, a high-quality recording studio, nineteen study rooms and a spacious new Starbucks.

In his speech, Graham talked of the changing role of libraries since Dirac’s day, especially since the revolutionary invention of the Web. Now the very definition of a library is controversial. As Lampedusa wrote in The Leopard, ‘For things to remain the same, everything must change’.

After the opening, Graham talked with Julia Zimmerman, Dean of FSU Libraries, Katie McCormick, Associate Dean for Special Collections and Archives, and Susan Contente, Director of Development at the Dirac Library. Together, they secured the personal correspondence between Adrian and his wife Margit that was held for many years by Dirac’s younger daughter Monica, who generously made it available to Graham when he was researching The Strangest Man. The correspondence is now available for reading in FSU’s Strozier Library.

Graham also talked with his old friend Marshall Knight, formerly the guardian of Dirac’s elder daughter Mary, and with Kurt Piehler, Associate Professor of History & Director of the Institute on World War II and the uman Experience, where Graham earlier gave a public talk Winston Churchill—a nuclear revolutionary?

Graham spent much of the week working on the Dirac archive as part of his research on his forthcoming book on the relationship between pure mathematics and theoretical physics.