PAULI, Wolfgang Ernst

P. originates from old Czech-German Jewish family living in Prague. His father, doctor of general medicine Wolfgang Josef P. (1869-1955) was in 1922, a full professor and head of the newly created Institute of colloid chemistry at the University of Vienna. Due to his employment at the University of Vienna in 1898 he converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. His mother Bertha Camilla Maria, born Schütz (1878-1927, suicide) was a writer and socialist-feminist oriented redactor of Neuen Freien Presse. Already as a twelve year old, whose godfather was recognized as the Viennese physicist and philosopher Ernst →Mach, he corrected an calculation error of his later teacher Arnold Sommerfeld at a public lecture and at 16 years read Einstein’s , at that time not yet widely recognized, theory of relativity and also understood it. In 1918 P. graduated with honors in Vienna and soon thereafter began to study in Munich with Sommerfeld, where he became acquainted with the structure of atoms and the basics of quantum theory.
He was awarded his Ph.D. In 1921, with " suma cum laude “ - his dissertation led to the realization that the current form of quantum theory was not correct – in the same year he became an assistant to Max Born in Göttingen. At the invitation of Niels Bohrs in 1922 he moved to Copenhagen, where he worked primarily on the clarification of the composition of the Zeeman effect, one of the normal phenomena, which describes different splitting of spectral lines emitted by the atom in a magnetic field. In 1923 P. was a scientific assistant to Wilhelm Lenz at the University of Hamburg and then later he was engaged in the research of matrix mechanics, together with Werner Heisenberg, with whom he became friends in Munich, Born and Bohr. He habilitated in 1924 and in his introductory lecture as a private lecturer he expressed opposition to Bohr’s belief that the interaction between electron shells and the spectral lines of the Zeeman effect must be stable. Bohr assumed that the characteristic of the atomic core were the cause for the Zeeman effect, while P. besides the three already known quantum numbers (range patrolling the track, spin orbit and its authorized = only possible direction), foreseen another, hitherto unknown additional feature of the electron. This fourth quantum number has been identified with further research as an electron rotation around its axis ( "spin"). In 1925, P. eventually published its exclusion principle, which is today known as the Pauli principle and it states that no two identical fermions may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. The theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945 has had great value and showed that the theoretical determination of the number of shells and electrons shells of an atom can predict and classify yet undiscovered elements of the periodic table.
In 1926 P. was appointed associate professor at the University in Hamburg, where he worked on the specific heat and electrical conductivity of the atom. His research on the magnetic characteristic of matter created an important basis for future material physics. As a supplement to Erwin →Schrödinger he created an nonrelativistic wave equation, which could describe the electron spin. In 1929, a year after he became an associate professor of theoretical physics at ETH-Zurich, he created quantum field theory together with Heisenberg and linked the Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum theory. In studies of hydrogen nuclei (protons) P. showed that they, like electrons, show half spin and satisfy the requirements of exclusion principle.
In early 1930, while addressing the question of beta decay P. realized that the energy, which centrifugates particles from the nucleus of an atom, is no longer the same with different atoms of the same substance and he interpreted that the missing part of the energy should be explained by emitting the second particle to each electron without significant weight and no electrical charge, and it is this energy that complements the missing value. This partricle which Enrico Fermi later named "neutrino" and was experimentally demonstrated not earlier than in 1965 by Reines and Cowan in Los Alamos / USA, should, according to P. occurre at the time of the exit from the nucleus and should, after the successful change disappear back into the atom. P. has lectured as a visiting professor at Michigan State University since 1931 and then in 1935/36 again as a visiting professor, and in the same period as Einstein, also lectured at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey.
With the annexation of Austria in March 1938, P. received a German passport but because of his origin and the fact that his father, sister Hertha (1909-1973) and his cousin Felix emigrated, had to fear for his future, although he has not been officially designated as Jew by the German authorities. After repeated rejection of P.’s applications for Swiss citizenship he adopted a second invitation of the Princeton Institute in 1940 and could remain in the USA to 1946, because his leave was constantly prolonged. P.’s second stay in America was conditioned by guest lectures in Michigan (1941) and Purdue University (1942) and the adoption in the American Society Pysical and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
From 1945 to 1947, P. issued an "Physical Review“. In 1946, as a Nobel Prize winner P. accepted the American nationality, but returned to Switzerland the same year, where he was appointed full professor and gained Swiss citizenship in 1949. P., who has also issued some publicly less known mathematical work, corresponded with Moritz Schlick → Mach’s successor in Vienna in the 1920s, the Viennese art historian Erwin Panofski and German-Jewish religious historian Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem, who in 1923 moved to Palestine.
After World War II he was mainly occupied with non-physical problems. He attributed special importance to direction of attention and intuition in the composition of natural laws system and he declared himself for the cosmic order, to which the soul of the one who is comprehending is subjected to as well as the perception of the comprehension.
In particular, he was attracted to CG Jung’s philospohy of life. Since 1953, P. led a very high-profile debate on the single theory of matter ( "World Formula") with Heisenberg.
In 1928, P. became a member of the Swiss physical society and was a frequent and respected guest in their discussions. In 1930 he received Lorentz, and in 1952 Franklin medal. In 1953 he became a foreign member of the Royal Society in London. P., who in 1934 married Franca Bertram (1901-1987) had no children. He had a strong personality with a great will to live and a deep understanding for the issues of others. P., who was called the "conscience of physics", due to his efforts for objectivity and humanity has died of a hitherto unknown disease, probably cancer, while he was in a taxi ride to the hospital.