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But, like Einstein, he had no school or following and had produced very few students. He had essentially no collaborators. Once, when asked about this, he remarked that "the really good ideas in physics are had by only one person. That seems to apply to poetry as well. He taught his classes in the quantum theory at Cambridge University, where he held Newton's Lucasian chair, by, literally, reading in his precise, clipped way from his great text on the subject. When this was remarked on, he replied that he had given the subject a good deal of thought and that there was no better way to present it.
但是跟爱因斯坦一样，他没有建立学派，没有追随者，也没有培养出几个学生。基本上也没有合作者。有一次被问及此事时，他说：“物理学上真正有价值的见地，只属于个人。”这个说法好像对诗歌也挺合适。他曾经在剑桥大学教授量子理论课程，在那里他坐着牛顿曾经执掌过的卢卡斯教授的席位，在教授课程时他以一种梢确的、掐头去尾的方式念着与课题有关的他本人的著作中的东西。当有人对此质疑时，他回答说他对该课题钻研至深，但没有更好的方式演示出来。
At the institute we had a weekly physics seminar over which Oppenheimer presided, often interrupting the speaker. Early in the fall we were in the midst of one of these—there were about forty people in attendance in a rather small room—when the door opened. In walked Dirac. I had never seen him before, but I had often seen pictures of him. The real thing was much better. He wore much of a blue suit—trousers, shirt, tie, and, as I recall, a sweater——but what made an indelible impression were the thigh-length muddy rubber boots. It turned out that he was spending a good deal of time in the woods near the institute with an ax, chopping a path in the general direction of Trenton. Some years later, when I had begun writing for The New Yorker and attempted a profile of Dirac, he suggested that we might conduct some of the sessions while clearing this path. He was apparently still working on it.
在研究院有一个每周一次由奥本海默主持的物理学研讨会，他还是不停地打断发言者。初秋的一天，其中一个研讨会正在进行，当时那个小房间容纳了大约有40余位与会者。这时门开了，狄拉克走了进来。我以前从来没有见过他，不过经常看到他的照片。他本人比照片好多了。他大致穿的是蓝色的套装——西裤、衬衫、领带，还有，我记得他还穿着一件毛衫。但是真正给人留下刻骨难忘的印象的是他的那双过膝的、粘满污泥的橡胶靴。后来证明他是在离研究院不远的树林里用了很长的时间手持板斧朝特顿大致的方向开辟一条小路。几年以后，当我开始给《纽约人》杂志撰稿时，试阁要一个狄拉兑的个人简介，他建议我们可以一边淸理那条小路一边找一些时间来谈这件事。很明显他仍然在从事着这项工作。
Now it is some twenty-five years later. The sun has not yet come up, and I am driving across the state of New Jersey with my companion. We have left New York at about 5 A.M. so that I will arrive in time for a midmorning lecture.
现在大约25年过去了。太阳还没有升起，我正驾车和我的女友穿越新泽西州。我们大约在早晨五点钟离开纽约，这样我才能及时到会做一个安排在上午的讲座。
