Ciro Santilli @cirosantilli 35

The Dirac equation can be derived basically "directly" from the Representation theory of the Lorentz group for the spin half representation, this is shown for example at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) 6.3 "Dirac Equation".

The Diract equation is the spacetime symmetry part of the quantum electrodynamics Lagrangian, i.e. is describes how spin half particles behave without interactions. The full quantum electrodynamics Lagrangian can then be reached by adding the $U(1)$ internal symmetry.

As mentioned at spin comes naturally when adding relativity to quantum mechanics, this same method allows us to analogously derive the equations for other spin numbers.

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The different only shows up for field, not with particles. For fields, there are two types of changes that we can make that can keep the Lagrangian unchanged as mentioned at Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter "4.5.2 Noether's Theorem for Field Theories - Spacetime":

From defining properties of elementary particles:

From the spacetime theory alone, we can derive the Lagrangian for the free theories for each spin:Then the internal symmetries are what add the interaction part of the Lagrangian, which then completes the Standard Model Lagrangian.

I like relativistic quantum mechanics.

Best mathematical explanation: Section "Spin comes naturally when adding relativity to quantum mechanics".

Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter 3.9 "Elementary particles" has an amazing summary of the preceding chapters the spin value has a relation to the representations of the Lorentz group, which encodes the spacetime symmetry that each particle observes. These symmetries can be characterized by small integer numbers:

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