In Science One Tries To Tell People,

I Think It Is The General Rule That The Originator Of A New Idea Is Not The Most Suitable Person To Develop It, Because His Fears Of Something Going Wrong Are Really Too Strong... At Age 69.

Living Is Worthwhile If One Can Contribute In Some Small Way To This Endless Chain Of Progress.

It Was Not Until Some Weeks Later That I Realized There Is No Need To Restrict Oneself To 2 By 2 Matrices. One Could Go On To 4 By 4 Matrices, And The Problem Is Then Easily Soluable. In Retrospect, It Seems Strange That One Can Be So Much Held Up Over Such An Elementary Point. The Resulting Wave Equation For The Electron Turned Out To Be Very Successful. It Led To Correct Values For The Spin And The Magnetic Moment. This Was Quite Unexpected. The Work All Followed From A Study Of Pretty Mathematics, Without Any Thought Being Given To These Physical Properties Of The Electron.

Well, In The First Place, It Leads To Great Anxiety As To Whether It's Going To Be Correct Or Not ... I Expect That's The Dominating Feeling. It Gets To Be Rather A Fever... At Age 60, When Asked About His Feelings On Discovering The Dirac Equation.

Hopes Are Always Accompanied By Fears, And, In Scientific Research, The Fears Are Liable To Become Dominant.