Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli

Born: 25 April 1900 in Vienna, Austria
Died: 15 Dec 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland

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Pauli is best known for the Pauli exclusion principle , proposed in 1928, which states that no two electrons in an atom can have the same four quantum numbers. Pauli, while still an undergraduate at Munich, wrote an article on the theory of relativity which became the standard text.

In 1923 he was appointed a lecturer at Hamburg, then in 1928 professor at Zurich. In 1924 he proposed a quantum spin number for electrons. He predicted mathematically, in 1931, that conservation laws required the existence of a new particle which was called the neutrino. It was later found experimentally.

In 1940 he was appointed to the chair of theoretical physics at Princeton then returned to Zurich after World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1945.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Pauli's work on quantum theory

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. Theoretical Physics in the Twentieth Century, a Memorial Volume to Wolfgang Pauli (New York, 1960).
  4. K V Laurikainen, Beyond the atom : the philosophical thought of Wolfgang Pauli (Berlin, 1988).
  5. J Hendry, The creation of quantum mechanics and the Bohr-Pauli dialogue (Dordrecht, 1984). 
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JOC/EFR February 1996