(Pauli's early writings, Theory of Relativity, published w...)
Pauli's early writings, Theory of Relativity, published when the author was a young man of 21, was originally conceived as a complete review of the whole literature on relativity. Pauli pays special attention to the thorny problem of unified field theories, its connection with the range validity of the classical field concept, and its application to the atomic features of nature. While an early skeptic of solutions along classical lines, Pauli's alternative model was subsequently supported by the newer epistemological analysis of quantum or wave mechanics.
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist who pioneered the study of quantum physics and is most famous for the Pauli exclusion principle. Nominated by Albert Einstein, he was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle."
Background
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was born on April 25, 1900, in Vienna, Austria. His father, Wolfgang Joseph Pauli, was a chemist and his mother was Bertha Camilla Schutz. Pauli's middle name came from his godfather, who was the famous physicist Ernst Mach. One can almost say that with this kind of company, he was destined for a great career involving science. Pauli's grandparents came from Prague and were from prominent Jewish families; his great grandfather was Wolf Pascheles, a great Hebrew publisher.
Education
Pauli attended the Doplinger-Gymnasium located in Vienna where he graduated with honors. Two months after graduation, Pauli published his first paper on Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Continuing his education, he enrolled at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and he received his doctorate in 1921 while researching the quantum theory of the atom under Arnold Sommerfeld. His thesis concerned the quantum theory of ionized diatomic hydrogen.
Pauli spent a year at Gottingen University, working as an assistant to Max Born, and in 1922 he worked as an assistant to Wilhelm Lenz at the University of Hamburg. Pauli then moved to Copenhagen to undertake research at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (this later became the Niels Bohr Institute).
He returned to Hamburg in 1923 and, after completing his habilitation qualification, Pauli took the position of lecturer at the University of Hamburg in 1924. It was during this time that Pauli became instrumental in the development of the modern theory of quantum physics.
His greatest contribution was to formulate his exclusion principle which stated that no two electrons can exist in the same quantum state. In other words, no electrons in an atom are permitted to have an identical set of quantum numbers. Later, the Pauli exclusion principle was found to have a broader meaning, extending to cover all fermions.
In 1925 he also used the newly developed matrix theory of quantum mechanics to solve nonrelativistic spin theory. In 1928, he accepted the position of professor of theoretical physics in Zurich at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. There he continued to make scientific advances. He became well known and traveled to Princeton and the University of Michigan as a visiting professor.
In 1930 while researching beta decay, he proposed the existence of a neutral particle of small mass, later called neutrinos; they were eventually discovered experimentally in 1956.
Pauli was awarded the prestigious Lorentz medal for his exclusion principle in 1931.
With the end of his first marriage and suffering from overwork, Pauli had a serious breakdown in 1931. He turned to psychologist Carl Jung who successfully treated him, Pauli then became interested in psychoanalysis and studied Jung's concepts for two years.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Pauli, fearing for his safety being of Jewish descent, accepted the position of Visiting Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton in 1940.
During his studies in America, he showed that particles with half-integer spin are fermions. Quarks (up and down) and leptons (electrons, electron neutrinos, muons, muon neutrinos, taus, and tau neutrinos) are all fermions. All fermions and particles derived from fermions, such as protons and neutrons, obey Fermi-Dirac statistics; this includes obeying the Pauli exclusion principle.
Pauli showed that particles with integer spin are bosons. These particles obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Photons, gluons, gravitons, and the W, Z, and Higgs bosons are all bosons.
He also accepted two visiting professorships from the University of Michigan in 1941 and from Purdue University in 1942.
Pauli was awarded Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle." In 1946 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
After the Second World War, Pauli returned to his professorship at Zurich where he remained for the rest of his career, studying quantum field theory and the history and philosophy of science. He finally became a Swiss citizen in 1949. In 1958 Pauli was awarded the Max Planck Medal for his extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics.
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli died in Rotkreuz hospital in Zurich on December 15, 1958, aged 58, from pancreatic cancer.
Wolfgang Pauli was Jewish by heredity, but was not told of this until his mid-teens. His father converted to Catholicism before marrying Pauli's mother, and he was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. His parents quit the church in 1911 and Pauli himself withdrew from Catholicism in 1929, though none of the Paulis publicly explained their reasons.
Politics
Wolfgang Pauli's political views were liberal.
Views
One of Wolfgang Pauli's greatest contributions to physics and to the field of quantum mechanics was his theory on electron spin that has become known as the Pauli exclusion principle. The Pauli exclusion principle stated that no two electrons could be in the same quantum state or configuration simultaneously. Wolfgang Pauli was able to prove this theory by introducing the concept of electron spin. He proposed this revolutionary theory in 1925. Pauli had discovered that each electron had a spin, or intrinsic angular momentum. This spin of the electron allowed two electrons to occupy an orbital level in the atom. One of the electrons would have spin + 1/2, and the other electron would have spin - 1/2. The electrons cannot have the same spin and once an orbital is full, another electron cannot enter unless one of the pair of electrons leaves that orbital. The number of electrons and electron orbital levels is a key part of what distinguishes different elements from one another. In addition, Wolfgang Pauli, using Heisenberg's matrix theory of quantum mechanics, used a 2 x 2 matrix to represent the spin states of particles in quantum theory. For Pauli's revolutionary exclusion principle, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics by none other than Albert Einstein, and he was awarded the prize in 1945 for his theory.
Quotations:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
"I do not mind if you think slowly, but I do object when you publish more quickly than you think."
"Our friend Dirac has a creed; and the main tenet of that creed is: There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet."
"Why did the chicken cross the road? There already was a chicken on this side of the road."
Membership
Pauli was a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London and a member of the Swiss Physical Society, the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
American Physical Society
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Royal Society
1953
Swiss Physical Society
Personality
After his mother's suicide in November 1927, Pauli - never a picture of health and athleticism - began drinking and smoking more heavily. He had always been a night owl, a frequenter of bars and cabarets, and these tendencies also increased.
Physical Characteristics:
Shortly after the divorce from his first wife, Wolfgang Pauli suffered a severe breakdown and was treated by the psychiatrist, Carl Jung.
Interests
Reading
Philosophers & Thinkers
Carl Jung, Plato
Connections
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli married Käthe Margarethe Deppner in 1929 but the marriage failed and they were divorced after less than a year.
In 1934 Pauli married Franciska Bertram, which proved to be a successful marriage. The couple had no children.