Learn · CERN

Talk57 min

The Mystery of Spinors

Michael Francis Atiyah and Luís Alvarez-Gaumé · CERN

Watch At CERN

About

One of the most fundamental and far-reaching advances in modern physics was the introduction of spinors by Dirac and their use in his famous equation. I will trace back the origins of this to William Rowan Hamilton's discovery of quaternions and follow up with a survey of the use of spinors in physics and mathematics. Despite their undoubted success the real meaning of spinors remains elusive..

0:00:00 Slide 1

0:02:50 Slide 2

0:05:39 Slide 3

0:11:17 Slide 4

0:16:55 Slide 5

0:22:33 Slide 6

0:28:11 Slide 7

0:33:49 Slide 8

0:39:27 Slide 9

0:45:05 Slide 10

0:50:43 Slide 11

The talk

  1. The Mystery of Spinors 2006-10-19 · 57 min · CERN's player

Credits and licence

Institution
CERN
Department
CERN Colloquium
Taught by
Michael Francis Atiyah, Luís Alvarez-Gaumé
Year
2006
Language
English
Subjects
Mathematics, Physics
Source
CERN
Licence
CERN, as CERN states it. CERN's terms
Attribution
© CERN. CERN provides its audiovisual media free of charge for educational and informational use, credited to CERN; this lecture is shown in CERN's own player.
Who can watch
CERN gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from what the source says about it. How courses are placed