‘The Strangest Man’ wins Costa Biography Award 2009

Paul Dirac was a pioneer of quantum mechanics and was regarded as an equal by Albert Einstein. He predicted, purely from what he saw in his equations, the existence of antimatter.

One of the youngest theoreticians to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and almost completely unable to communicate or empathise.
Based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers in Florida, Graham Farmelo celebrates Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of his life and the people around him.

Judges described the book as "Moving, funny, sad and intensely readable, this is a fascinating insight into the psychology of genius."

Graham Farmelo is Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London, and Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Formerly a theoretical physicist, he is now an international consultant in science communication. He edited the best-selling It Must be Beautiful:Great Equations of Modern Science in 2002.

The Costa Book Awards is one of the most prestigious and popular literary prizes in the UK and recognises some of the most enjoyable books of the year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
The annual Costa awards honour writers in five categories - novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children's book - from which an overall winner is chosen.

The category winners receive £5,000 each and are eligible for the overall Costa Book of the Year, which comes with a cheque for £25,000.

The poet Christopher Reid was this years Costa Book Award winner for his collection A Scattering.
Previous winners include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson, The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, Beowulf by Seamus Heaney and Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes.