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Concept
Wolfgang Pauli
Summary
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (ˈpɔːli; ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈpaʊli; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) 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". The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.
Pauli was born in Vienna to a chemist, Wolfgang Joseph Pauli (né Wolf Pascheles, 1869–1955), and his wife, Bertha Camilla Schütz; his sister was Hertha Pauli, a writer and actress. Pauli's middle name was given in honor of his godfather, physicist Ernst Mach. Pauli's paternal grandparents were from prominent Jewish families of Prague; his great-grandfather was the Jewish publisher Wolf Pascheles. Pauli's mother, Bertha Schütz, was raised in her mother's Roman Catholic religion; her father was Jewish writer Friedrich Schütz. Pauli was raised as a Roman Catholic.
Pauli attended the Döblinger-Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating with distinction in 1918. Two months later, he published his first paper, on Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. He 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 (H2+).
Sommerfeld asked Pauli to review the theory of relativity for the Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften (Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences). Two months after receiving his doctorate, Pauli completed the article, which came to 237 pages. Einstein praised it; published as a monograph, it remains a standard reference on the subject.
Pauli spent a year at the University of Göttingen as the assistant to Max Born, and the next year at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen (later the Niels Bohr Institute). From 1923 to 1928, he was a professor at the University of Hamburg.
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