Antimatter has been a topic of great interest for physics enthusiasts for the past 100 years. As a relatively new topic there have been many recent advances in the theory and technology that has allowed us to observe this phenomenon. The timeline below outlines some of key people and ideas behind our recent understanding of antimatter.
![Paul Dirac combines Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to describe the behavior of the electron in an equation and wins the Nobel Prize in 1933 [1]. Dirac realized that his award winning equation could have two solutions, one for an electron with positive energy, and one for an electron with negative energy (much like the equation x2 = 9 has two solutions; x = -3 or x = 3). This started Dirac thinking that for every particle that exists in matter, there must be a corresponding antiparticle. He even postulated that there could be entire universes comprised of antimatter](images/pic4.png)
[1] Rosy Mondarini, The History of Antimatter, LIVEfromCERN, livefromcern.web.cern.ch (2001).
[2] Alaina G Levine, Carl Anderson, American Physics Society, www.aps.org (2009).
[3] Lynn Yarris, The Golden Anniversary of the Antiproton, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, www.lbl.gov (2005).
[4] The Nobel Prize in Physics 1959, Nobelprize.org, http://www.nobelprize.org (2013)
[5] First antiatoms produced: antihydrogen, at CERN, CERN Timelines, timeline.web.cern.ch (1995).
[6] David Vidmar, The Dirac Equation and the Prediction of Antimatter, http://phys.psu.edu/~irina/papers_and_pres/dirac%20antimatter%20paper.pdf (2011).
[7]Gaillarde, R. (Photographer). (1995). Walter oelert. [Web Photo]. Retrieved from http://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/image/Laroussefr_-_Article/1004646