下面这个视频中说狄拉克推导他的公式是为了总结前人的经验将薛定谔方程从低速推广到高速。。。。估计他在做节目之前懒得去了解一下狄拉克本人是怎么讲的。其实只要打开狄拉克1928年推导该方程的文章随便扫一眼狄拉克的原文(Dirac, P. A. M. (1928). "The Quantum Theory of the Electron". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 117 (778): 610–624. ),就能知道狄拉克当初不是吃饱没事干去要泛泛地发展薛定谔方程,而是有着非常明确的“项目目标”的,那就是当时的量子力学理论提出的原子能级上只有一个电子(指的是泡利大师的理论)与实验结果之间的不一致:
The new quantum mechanics, when applied to the problem of the structure of the atom with point-charge electrons, does not give results in agreement with experiment. The discrepancies consist of “ duplexity ” phenomena, the observed number of stationary states for an electron in an atom being twice the number given by the theory. To meet the difficulty, Goudsmit and Uhlen- beck have introduced the idea of an electron with a spin angular momentum of half a quantum and a magnetic moment of one Bohr magneton. This model for the electron has been fitted into the new mechanics by Pauli,* and Darwin,f working with an equivalent theory, has shown that it gives results in agreement with experiment for hydrogen-like spectra to the first order of accuracy.