Wolfgang Pauli

A Young Prodigy in Physics

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was born on 25 April 1900 in Vienna, Austria. He finished school in Vienna in 1918 and began studying physics at the University of Munich that same year, studying under Arnold Sommerfeld.

Pauli showed extraordinary ability from the start. He received his doctorate in 1921 at only 21 and wrote an influential account of relativity while still very young. Einstein praised his scientific ability.

The Exclusion Principle

After his doctorate, Pauli worked as an assistant at Göttingen in 1921–1922 and then spent time with Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in 1922–1923. He worked at Hamburg during the 1920s and completed his habilitation there in 1924.

During 1924, Pauli developed the principle that would bear his name. Published in 1925, the exclusion principle states that identical fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state. Pauli originally developed it in connection with electrons in atoms, and it became essential to understanding atomic structure and the periodic table.

Pauli received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the exclusion principle.

The Neutrino Proposal

In December 1930, Pauli proposed a new neutral particle to account for missing energy in beta decay — a process in which some energy seemed to disappear. He described the idea in his famous open letter to 'radioactive ladies and gentlemen'.

Enrico Fermi later developed beta-decay theory and popularised the name 'neutrino'. The neutrino was experimentally detected much later by Clyde Cowan and Frederick Reines. Pauli proposed its existence years before it was detected.

Zurich, Princeton and Legacy

In 1928, Pauli became professor of theoretical physics at ETH Zurich. In 1940, he moved temporarily to the United States and worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He returned to ETH Zurich in 1946.

Pauli became an American citizen in 1946 and a Swiss citizen in 1949. He died on 15 December 1958 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The exclusion principle remains one of the most important rules in quantum physics. It helps explain why electrons occupy different atomic shells, which in turn explains the structure of the periodic table and the chemical behaviour of the elements.