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1. Interesting note about Paul Dirac and Cambridge: he took the entrance exam and won a scholarship to St.Johns, but it didn’t pay enough for him to live there, let alone go there and study.

   It was a postgraduate study grant from the Department for Education and Science (or rather, its forerunner) which allowed him to go up after his degree from Bristol.

   Had that not been available, he would not have gone; and he would probably have gone on to make a living as an engineer – with distinction, being Dirac – but not as a physicist.

   I recall the university vice chancellors’ inndecent enthusiasm for shifting away from grant-based funding for their students. They probably knew about Dirac; perhaps there’s one of them who doesn’t like the idea of lower-middle-class people becoming Lucasian Professor.

   Or perhaps there’s a consensus that education is first and foremost an economic benefit.

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