54
R. N. Mohapatra
Fig. 7.1 Henri Bacquerel. Courtesy: Wikipedia.org
puzzle. From the tone of his letter, it was clear that he thought of this remedy
as extreme. Nevertheless, other resolutions to the above observations were so
radical that he just decided to present this idea to the physics community. He
was so cautious that he wrote in his letter “. . .only those who dare can win”
and surely win he did, when this particle was discovered 25 years later.
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was born in Vienna in the year 1900, to Wolfgang
Joseph Pauli and Bertha Camilla Schutz. His father gave his middle name
as “Ernst,” after physicist Ernst Mach, well known for Mach’s principle,
and revered by Pauli’s father, himself a chemist. Mach was the godfather of
Wolfgang. Pauli attended the Döblinger Gymnasium, Vienna, for his early
education, and in 1918, went to the University of Munich where he received
his doctoral diploma in theoretical physics, summa cum laude, in 1921, under
the supervision of Arnold Sommerfeld. At the age of 21, Pauli wrote a book
on the theory of relativity. In 1924, Pauli proposed the famous Pauli exclusion
principle, which says that two particles with spin half cannot occupy the same
position in space, a principle that explains the stability of matter. No deviations
from this principle have been observed to date, despite many valiant efforts in
recent years. Soon after suggesting the exclusion principle, he suggested a set
of matrices to describe spin half particles like the electron, and those matrices
bear his name: Pauli matrices. He was recommended for the Nobel Prize for
his work on the exclusion principle by Albert Einstein and he received the Prize
in 1945. Pauli died at an early age of 58 (Figs. 7.2).
R. N. Mohapatra
Fig. 7.1 Henri Bacquerel. Courtesy: Wikipedia.org
puzzle. From the tone of his letter, it was clear that he thought of this remedy
as extreme. Nevertheless, other resolutions to the above observations were so
radical that he just decided to present this idea to the physics community. He
was so cautious that he wrote in his letter “. . .only those who dare can win”
and surely win he did, when this particle was discovered 25 years later.
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was born in Vienna in the year 1900, to Wolfgang
Joseph Pauli and Bertha Camilla Schutz. His father gave his middle name
as “Ernst,” after physicist Ernst Mach, well known for Mach’s principle,
and revered by Pauli’s father, himself a chemist. Mach was the godfather of
Wolfgang. Pauli attended the Döblinger Gymnasium, Vienna, for his early
education, and in 1918, went to the University of Munich where he received
his doctoral diploma in theoretical physics, summa cum laude, in 1921, under
the supervision of Arnold Sommerfeld. At the age of 21, Pauli wrote a book
on the theory of relativity. In 1924, Pauli proposed the famous Pauli exclusion
principle, which says that two particles with spin half cannot occupy the same
position in space, a principle that explains the stability of matter. No deviations
from this principle have been observed to date, despite many valiant efforts in
recent years. Soon after suggesting the exclusion principle, he suggested a set
of matrices to describe spin half particles like the electron, and those matrices
bear his name: Pauli matrices. He was recommended for the Nobel Prize for
his work on the exclusion principle by Albert Einstein and he received the Prize
in 1945. Pauli died at an early age of 58 (Figs. 7.2).