The Collected Works of P A. M. Dirac, 1924-1948, edited by R. H. Dalitz
(Cambridge University Press, £175, ISBN 0 521 36231 8) brings together
all Dirac’s scientific works, with the exceptions of his doctoral thesis and
his books. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933, Dirac was one of the
giants of the emerging field of quantum mechanics, which was developed to
describe the behaviour of matter on the atomic and subatomic level.

Heisenberg introduced the matrix notation and Schro¨dinger complemented
it with his wave interpretation. But perhaps the most elegant formulation of
the new mechanics was that of Dirac, who developed the “bra and ket” (bra-c-
ket) notation for the wave function describing a quantum system. This gave
quantum mechanics a system that enabled scientists to keep track of the
theoretical operations on and transitions between quantum states corresponding
to experiments and measurements in the laboratory.

A study of these collected works shows how Dirac struggled with the
physical interpretation of the new mechanics, particularly in the run-up to
the 1927 Solvay Conference, which was decisive in establishing the quantum
world picture. In a paper written in 1926, Dirac concluded: “One can suppose
that the initial state of a system determines definitely the state of the
system at any subsequent time … however … one cannot actually set up a
one-one [sic] correspondence between the values of [the] co-ordinates and
momenta initially and their values at a subsequent time. All the same one can
obtain a good deal of information (of the nature of averages) about the values
at the subsequent time considered as functions of the initial values.”

It was Dirac’s work on marrying quantum mechanics with relativity to
describe the behaviour of the electron that finally led him to postulate in
1931 the existence of its “mirror image”, the antimatter positron. Allowing
for Einstein’s theory gave twice as many energy levels as required, and the
trick was to throw away the negative energy solutions. But what if you kept
these “holes in the vacuum”, as Dirac’s visualised them? You ended up with a
particle that was identical to the electron in every way, but positively
charged.

Dirac’s work represented a success in bringing together the two revolutions
in physics of the 20th century, Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics.
But the two remain uneasy bedfellows. Princeton has published its fifth volume
of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, edited by Martin J. Klein, A. J.
Kox and Robert Schulmann, ($85 hbk, lSBN 0 691 03322 6, $27.95
pbk). This covers the “Swiss Years” between 1902 and 1914, which saw Einstein
starting as a 23-year-old technical expert in the Bern patent office and
ending as professor at the University of Berlin. The volume is a mixture of
personal and scientific correspondence.

In the run-up to the quantum/relativity revolution, two of the giants of
electricity and magnetism were the British theoretician Maxwell and the
American inventor Edison. Volume two of The Scientific Letters and Papers of
James Clerk Maxwell, edited by P. M. Harman (Cambridge,
£190/$285, ISBN 0 521 25626 7), begins with his first referee
reports for the Royal Society and concluding just before the inauguration of
the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. These were the years in which Maxwell
established his position, writing on the statistical mechanics of molecules
and the field theory of electricity and magnetism.

Volume three of The Papers of Thomas Edison, edited by Robert A. Rosenberg,
Paul B. Israel, Keith A. Nier and Martha J. King (Johns Hopkins University
Press, £54, ISBN 0 8018 3102 4), sees Edison in 1876 establishing his
laboratories at Menlo Park, where his team carried out research on telephony
and struggling to sort out his business arrangements.

Perhaps this would not matter too much if physical science students
were destined only for the backrooms of scientific laboratories. But recent
trends indicate that many science graduates end up in careers far from their
initial training. Many a physics graduate is to be found predicting the
futures market in the Square Mile; many a chemist is hyping it up in public
relations.

One of the main complaints of those graduates who leave science is that
their course concentrated on producing students equipped to follow a research
career, and that the underlying assumption was that such research would
be carried out in an academic environment.

Those who eventually find themselves elsewhere, whether as scientific
researchers or in another capacity, often feel ill equipped for the environment
of commerce and industry. These young people have often to write off their
last three years’ training. At most, all they got from their BSc was a grounding
in scientific logic and numeracy. The factual content of their subject was
just so much excess baggage.

The academic scientific community which supplied the excess baggage
can be heard loudly bemoaning the ‘loss’ of talented young scientists. Yet
academic scientists also complain about scientific illiteracy in exactly
those nonscience professions which are now welcoming science students.

Perhaps if there were less moaning and greater acceptance of this intellectual
osmosis, the exodus could be turned to everyone’s advantage.

The refugee graduates ought to be able to think of their scientific
knowledge and training as a bonus. It ought to make a positive, constructive
contribution to their working lives, and be a source of insight for their
colleagues. At the same time, the scientific community should be reaping
the benefit of this broad and influential distribution of people who are
sympathetic to science.

The reason why this is not the case is that science graduates are often
unable to share their science with their nonscientific colleagues. They
are unable to communicate. Instead of building Bragg’s ‘flying bridge’ they
find themselves erecting barriers whenever called upon to explain scientific
concepts in everyday terms.

Attitudes in the scientific community are changing, albeit slowly. In
1985, the Royal Society published a report on the public understanding of
science in Britain. Its conclusions took many members of the scientific
community by surprise.

The report advocated increased cooperation with the media, more training
in communication skills for scientists and wider science education. It also
recommended that communication skills be an integral part of every undergraduate
science course.

The response in British universities has been patchy, to say the least.
The reasons are not clear. It may be that nothing more than straightforward
inertia is responsible. Being more charitable, academic scientists may simply
feel their job is to teach science and that any attempts to delve into the
art of communication will be ill received by both students and the outside
world. However, there is evidence to suggest these fears are ill founded.

For example, the departments of chemical and electrical engineering
at Imperial College, London, have for many years offered their students
tuition in giving talks. The motivation was partly to save examiners from
hordes of trembling undergraduates mumbling their way through their oral
exams. But mostly, it was the recognition that engineers have to deal with
‘the public’ – bankers, designers, construction workers – all the time.

Although these classes are crammed into odd spaces in overcrowded timetables,
the students take the idea seriously and work hard on their talks. Through
a process of practice, group discussion and criticism, all the students
show a clear improvement in their communication skills. The best students
give talks that are positively entertaining, as well as informative.

Over the past 12 months, University College London has been preparing
a new course on the communication of scientific ideas. This will start in
January as part of the science faculty’s new physical sciences degree. Part
of the course will involve the oral communication skills now being taught
to engineers at Imperial. The rest is designed to bring students’ writing
skills to a level where they could, perhaps, submit an article to New �Ӱ�ԭ��
without it needing major surgery at the hands of a subeditor.

Preparations for this element of the course have involved contacts with
working journalists and bodies whose aims include making science more accessible
to the general public, such as the British Association for the Advancement
of Science and CIBA’s Media Resource Service. Here, too, initial approaches
have produced an enthusiastic response.

The conclusion from these ventures is that students want to know how
to present the information they are learning in a coherent and attractive
manner, and that initiatives by science departments which try to give their
graduates such skills will be well received in the outside world.

It is not necessary to pay a fortune for a ‘win-friends-and-influence-people’
sales guru. There are many people in universities who are interested in
communication. In many science faculties, staff are now taking upon themselves
the responsibility for ‘chairing’ classes for their students in communications
skills. Given half a chance, most students would happily criticise their
lecturers: in a class where they do the talking or writing, students learn
by criticising each other.

For academic scientists, the challenge of producing students with the
communications skills demanded by society may be daunting. One thing, however,
is certain. If we do not even try, we can never succeed.

Jane Gregory researches the communication of scientific ideas at Imperial
College, London. Dr Steve Miller is the press officer for the Department
of Physics and Astronomy at University College London.