31 Facts About Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics.

In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle".

Wolfgang Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic, although eventually he and his parents left the Church.

Wolfgang Pauli attended the Doblinger-Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating with distinction in 1918.

Wolfgang Pauli attended the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, working under Arnold Sommerfeld, where he received his PhD in July 1921 for his thesis on the quantum theory of ionized diatomic hydrogen.

Two months after receiving his doctorate, Wolfgang Pauli completed the article, which came to 237 pages.

Wolfgang Pauli spent a year at the University of Gottingen as the assistant to Max Born, and the next year at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen.

Wolfgang Pauli wrote a paper on colloid chemistry and medicine in 1924.

In 1928, Wolfgang Pauli was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

Wolfgang Pauli held visiting professorships at the University of Michigan in 1931 and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1935.

Wolfgang Pauli soon began to critique the epistemology of Jung's theory scientifically, and this contributed to a certain clarification of Jung's ideas, especially about synchronicity.

Jung's elaborate analysis of more than 400 of Wolfgang Pauli's dreams is documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

In 1933 Wolfgang Pauli published the second part of his book on Physics, Handbuch der Physik, which was considered the definitive book on the new field of quantum physics.

In 1940, Wolfgang Pauli moved to the United States, where he was employed as a professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Wolfgang Pauli made many important contributions as a physicist, primarily in the field of quantum mechanics.

Wolfgang Pauli seldom published papers, preferring lengthy correspondences with colleagues such as Niels Bohr from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and Werner Heisenberg, with whom he had close friendships.

In 1921 Wolfgang Pauli worked with Bohr to create the Aufbau Principle, which described building up electrons in shells based on the German word for building up, as Bohr was fluent in German.

Wolfgang Pauli proposed in 1924 a new quantum degree of freedom with two possible values, to resolve inconsistencies between observed molecular spectra and the developing theory of quantum mechanics.

Wolfgang Pauli formulated the Pauli exclusion principle, perhaps his most important work, which stated that no two electrons could exist in the same quantum state, identified by four quantum numbers including his new two-valued degree of freedom.

In 1926, shortly after Heisenberg published the matrix theory of modern quantum mechanics, Wolfgang Pauli used it to derive the observed spectrum of the hydrogen atom.

In 1940, Wolfgang Pauli re-derived the spin-statistics theorem, a critical result of quantum field theory that states that particles with half-integer spin are fermions, while particles with integer spin are bosons.

Wolfgang Pauli made repeated criticisms of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, and his contemporary admirers point to modes of epigenetic inheritance as supporting his arguments.

Wolfgang Pauli was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1953 and president of the Swiss Physical Society in 1955 for two years.

The Wolfgang Pauli effect was named after his anecdotal bizarre ability to break experimental equipment simply by being in its vicinity.

Wolfgang Pauli was aware of his reputation and was delighted whenever the Wolfgang Pauli effect manifested.

Wolfgang Pauli could be scathing in his dismissal of any theory he found lacking, often labelling it ganz falsch, "utterly wrong".

Wolfgang Pauli's supposed remark when meeting another leading physicist, Paul Ehrenfest, illustrates this notion of an arrogant Pauli.

Wolfgang Pauli is considered to have been a deist and a mystic.

In 1929, Wolfgang Pauli married Kathe Margarethe Deppner, a cabaret dancer.

Wolfgang Pauli married again in 1934 to Franziska Bertram.

Wolfgang Pauli died of pancreatic cancer on December 15,1958, at age 58.