• University of Hamburg
• University of Göttingen
• ETH Zurich

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli(German Wolfgang Ernst Pauli; April 25, Vienna - December 15, Zurich) - Swiss theoretical physicist who worked in the field of particle physics and quantum mechanics. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1945.

Biography

Family and early years

Wolfgang Pauli was born in Vienna to a doctor and professor of chemistry, Wolfgang Josef Pauli (1869-1955), who came from a prominent Prague Jewish family, Pascheles ( Paschelles). In 1898, his father changed his surname to Pauli, and the following year, shortly before his marriage, he converted to the Catholic faith. Wolfgang Pauli's mother is the journalist Bertha Camille Pauli (née Schütz, 1878-1927), daughter of the journalist and playwright Friedrich Schütz. The family also had a younger sister, Gert Pauli (1909-1973). Pauli received his middle name in honor of his godfather, physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach, who was Pauli's father's teacher in Prague.

In 1910-1918 he studied at the prestigious Döblinger Federal Gymnasium in Vienna, where he earned a reputation as a child prodigy. They say that one day in a physics lesson, the teacher made a mistake on the blackboard that he could not find, and in desperation called out: “Pauli, finally tell me what the mistake is! You must have found it long ago." Pauli's classmates included future 1938 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Richard Kuhn.

Education and the beginning of scientific activity

In autumn 1918, Wolfgang entered the University of Munich, with the famous physicist Arnold Sommerfeld as his tutor. At the request of Sommerfeld, the 20-year-old Pauli wrote an extensive review for the Physical Encyclopedia on general relativity, and this monograph is still a classic. Pauli's pan-European fame begins with this work. Further, however, the subject of his work concerned mainly the rapidly developing quantum mechanics and related problems of atomic physics. Sommerfeld's pupils included Werner Heisenberg, who became a close friend of Pauli.

In 1921, Pauli defended his thesis, after which he received an invitation to become an assistant to Max Born and moved to Göttingen. A year later (1922), Pauli briefly taught in Hamburg, then, at the invitation of Niels Bohr, visited him in Copenhagen and intensely discussed with Bohr possible explanations for the anomalous Zeeman effect. In 1923 he returned to Hamburg,

Recognition and final years

Wolfgang Pauli in the year of the Nobel Prize (1945)

Pauli's finest hour came in 1925 when he discovered a new quantum number (later called spin) and formulated the fundamental Pauli exclusion principle, which explained the structure of the electron shells of atoms.

In the late 1920s, there was a severe crisis in Pauli's personal life. In 1927, his mother committed suicide. The father remarried, and his relationship with his son deteriorated markedly. In 1929, Pauli married the ballerina Kate Deppner ( Kathe Margarethe Deppner), soon the wife went to her old friend, and in 1930 the couple separated. Pauli became depressed, it was then that he began to communicate with the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, abruptly broke with the Catholic religion and began to abuse alcohol.

In 1928, Pauli left for Switzerland, where he was appointed professor at the ETH Zurich. In 1930, Pauli proposed the existence of the elementary particle neutrino, which became his second most important contribution to atomic physics. This all-penetrating particle was experimentally discovered only 26 years later, during Pauli's lifetime. In the summer of 1931, Pauli visited the United States for the first time, then went to an international congress on nuclear physics in Rome; there, he recalled with disgust, he had to shake hands with Mussolini.

In 1933, Pauli remarried - to Franka Bertram ( Franziska "Franca" Bertram, 1901-1987), this union was more successful than the first, although the couple had no children.

The remaining 12 years of Pauli's life were devoted to the development of quantum field theory and teaching. Students from many countries came to listen to his lectures, and Pauli himself traveled a lot around Europe with reports and lectures. In 1945, the scientist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, after which (1949) the Swiss authorities recognized him as a Swiss citizen (he received US citizenship only before leaving, in January 1946). Several times (1949, 1953 and 1958) he visited Princeton again (jokingly "I came back to lose weight"), where he discussed physical problems with those colleagues who did not dare to return to Europe after the war.

Pauli was awarded the Max Planck Medal in 1958 and died of cancer in Zurich in December of that year.

Scientific achievements

Pauli made a significant contribution to modern physics, especially in the physics of the microworld. The number of works he published is relatively small, he always preferred an intense exchange of letters with his colleagues, especially with close friends Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. For this reason, many of his ideas are found only in these letters, which were often passed on. Nevertheless, his main achievements are widely known:

In 1921, Pauli was the first to propose the "Bohr magneton" as a unit for measuring the magnetic moment.

In 1926, shortly after Heisenberg's publication of the matrix representation of quantum mechanics, Pauli successfully applied the theory to describe the observed spectrum of hydrogen, including the Stark effect. This became a strong argument for the recognition of Heisenberg's theory. The work of Pauli and Heisenberg in the late 1920s laid the foundation for two new sciences that soon appeared - quantum field theory and solid state physics.

In 1930, Pauli published a hypothesis about the existence of neutrinos. He realized that during the beta decay of a neutron into a proton and an electron, the laws of conservation of energy and momentum can be fulfilled only if another, hitherto unknown particle is emitted. Since at that time it was impossible to prove the existence of this particle, Pauli postulated the existence of an unknown particle. The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi later named this particle "neutron": neutrino. Experimental proof of the existence of neutrinos appeared only in 1956.

Personal qualities

In the field of physics, Pauli was known as a perfectionist. At the same time, he did not limit himself only to his works, but also ruthlessly criticized the mistakes of his colleagues. He became the "conscience of physics", often referring to the work as "completely wrong", or commenting something like this: "Not only is this wrong, it doesn't even reach the point of being wrong!" In the circles of his colleagues, there was such a joke about this: “After his death, Pauli is honored with an audience with God. Pauli asks God why the fine structure constant is 1/137. God nods, goes to the blackboard and starts writing equation after equation at a frightening pace. Pauli looks at first with great satisfaction, but soon begins to shake his head strongly and decisively.

Pauli was also famous for the fact that in his presence, sensitive experimental equipment often suddenly failed. This phenomenon is known as the "Pauli effect".

Dialogue Pauli - Jung

A lesser known area of ​​his work, which has only been closely studied since 1990, emerged from a collaboration with psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. From their correspondence, which both scientists conducted from 1932 to 1958, it becomes clear that Pauli belongs most of the concept of synchronicity, which was introduced by C. G. Jung, and, in addition, part of the refinement of the concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes, which are of paramount importance for Jung's work.

An essential part of this dialogue is still today an unresolved psychophysical problem, the unification of the collective psycho with matter, deep roots inner world person with the outside world, which Jung referred to as unus mundus(one world) and Pauli as the psychophysical reality of unity.

The current state of the analysis of his notes shows that these studies of Pauli were not only of purely academic interest, but took their origins from their own deep-seated experiences - existential reflections on the archetype "spirit of matter".

Awards and memory

• 1931: awarded the Lorenz medal.
• 1945: in physics.
• 1950: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
• 1958: Recipient of the Max Planck Medal.

Memorial in Göttingen

An alley in the 14th district of Vienna is named after Pauli ( Wolfgang-Pauli-Gasse) and a street on the university campus of Zurich ( Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse). A memorial sign was erected in honor of the scientist in Göttingen ( Wolfgang-Pauli-Weg).

In 1918, Mr.. P. entered the University of Munich, where he studied under the guidance of the famous physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. At this time, the German mathematician Felix Klein was busy publishing a mathematical encyclopedia. Klein asked Sommerfeld to write a review of Einstein's general and special theory of relativity, and Sommerfeld in turn asked 20-year-old P to write this article. He quickly wrote a 250-page article, which Sommerfeld described as "simply masterfully done" and Einstein praised.

In 1921, having completed his doctoral dissertation on the theory of the hydrogen molecule and received his doctorate in the shortest possible time for the university, P. went to Göttingen, where he studied scientific research with Max Born and James Franck. At the end of 1922, he worked in Copenhagen as an assistant to Niels Bohr. Work under the guidance of Sommerfeld, Born, Frank and Bohr aroused P. interest in a new field of physics - quantum theory, which studied the atom and subatomic particles, and he completely immersed himself in the problems facing physicists in this area.

Although the principles of classical physics made it possible to satisfactorily explain the behavior of macroscopic physical systems, attempts to apply the same principles to atomic scale phenomena have failed. It seemed especially difficult nuclear model an atom in which the electrons revolve in orbits around the central nucleus. According to the principles of classical physics, orbiting electrons must continuously emit electromagnetic radiation, losing energy and spiraling towards the nucleus. In 1913, Bohr suggested that electrons cannot continuously emit radiation, since they must be in their allowed orbits; all intermediate orbits are forbidden. An electron can only emit or absorb radiation by making a quantum jump from one allowed orbit to another.

Bohr's model was partly based on the study of atomic spectra. When an element is heated and goes into a gas or vapor state, it emits light with a characteristic spectrum. This spectrum is not a continuous color region like that of the Sun, but consists of a succession of bright lines of certain wavelengths separated by wider dark areas. Bohr's atomic model explained main point atomic spectra: each line represented the light emitted by an atom when electrons move from one allowed orbit to another lower-energy orbit. Moreover, the model correctly predicted most of the features of the simplest atomic spectrum, the spectrum of hydrogen. At the same time, the spectra of more complex atoms were less successfully described using this model.

Two more significant shortcomings of the Bohr model helped P. in the future to make a significant contribution to quantum theory. First, this model could not explain some of the subtle details in the hydrogen spectrum. For example, when an atomic gas was placed in a magnetic field, some of the spectral lines split into several closely spaced lines, an effect first discovered by Peter Zeeman in 1896. More important, however, was that the stability of the electron orbits was not fully explained. Although it was considered obvious that the electrons could not spiral down into the nucleus, emitting radiation continuously, there was no obvious reason why they should not jump in jumps, passing from one allowed orbit to another and gathering together in the lowest energy state.

In 1923, Mr.. P. became an assistant professor of theoretical physics at the University of Hamburg. Here, at the beginning of 1925, he worked theoretical research the structure of atoms and their behavior in magnetic fields, developing the theory of the Zeeman effect and other types of spectral splitting. He suggested that electrons have a certain property, which later Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenbeck called spin, or intrinsic angular momentum. In a magnetic field, the electron spin has two possible orientations: the spin axis can be directed in the same direction as the field, or in the opposite direction. The orbital motion of an electron in an atom defines another axis, which can be oriented differently depending on the applied external field. The various possible combinations of spin and orbital orientations differ slightly energetically, resulting in an increase in the number of atomic energy states. Transitions of an electron from each of these sublevels to some other orbit correspond to slightly different wavelengths of light, which explains the fine splitting of the spectral lines.

Shortly after P. introduced this property "two-valued" electron, he analytically explained why all the electrons in the atom do not occupy the lowest energy level. In the Bohr model improved by him, the admissible energy states, or orbits, of electrons in an atom are described by four quantum numbers for each electron. These numbers determine the basic energy level of the electron, its orbital angular momentum, its magnetic moment and (this was P.'s contribution) the orientation of its spin. Each of these quantum numbers can only take certain values, moreover, only some combinations of these values ​​are allowed. He formulated the law, which became known as the Pauli exclusion principle, according to which no two electrons in a system can have the same set of quantum numbers. Thus, each shell in an atom can contain only a limited number of electron orbits, determined by the admissible values ​​of quantum numbers.

The Pauli exclusion principle plays a fundamental role in understanding the structure and behavior of atoms, atomic nuclei, the properties of metals, and other physical phenomena. He explains chemical interaction elements and their previously incomprehensible arrangement in periodic system. Sam P. used the principle of prohibition in order to understand the magnetic properties of simple metals and some gases.

Best of the day

Shortly after P. formulated his principle of prohibition, quantum theory received a solid theoretical foundation thanks to the work of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg and P.A.M. Dirac. The theoretical apparatus used by them to describe atomic and subatomic systems came to be called quantum mechanics. Bohr's atomic model was replaced by a quantum mechanical model that was more successful at predicting spectra and other atomic phenomena. With regard to the achievements of P., they made it possible to extend quantum mechanics to areas such as high-energy particle physics and the interaction of particles with light and other forms of electromagnetic fields. These areas became known as relativistic quantum electrodynamics.

In 1928, Mr.. P. replaced Peter Debye as professor of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, where he remained for the rest of his life, except for two periods spent in the United States; he spent the academic year 1935/36 as a visiting lecturer at the Institute for Basic Research in Princeton (New Jersey) and during the Second World War, when, fearing that Germany would invade Switzerland, he returned to the same institute, where he headed Department of Theoretical Physics from 1940 to 1946

In the 30s. he made another important contribution to physics. Observations on the beta decay of atomic nuclei, in which a neutron in the nucleus emits an electron, turning into a proton, revealed an obvious violation of the law of conservation of energy: after taking into account all registered decay products, the energy after decay turned out to be less than its value before decay. In 1930, Mr.. P. put forward a hypothesis, according to which it was assumed that during such a decay some unregistered particle (which Enrico Fermi called neutrino) is emitted, carrying away the lost energy, and at the same time the law of conservation of angular momentum remained in force. In the end, neutrinos were registered in 1956.

In 1945, Mr.. P. was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the exclusion principle, which is also called the Pauli exclusion principle." He was not present at the award ceremony, and it was received on his behalf by an employee of the American embassy in Stockholm, In the Nobel lecture sent to Stockholm the following year, P. summed up his work on the exclusion principle and quantum mechanics.

P. became a Swiss citizen in 1946. In further work, he sought to shed light on the problem of the interaction of particles of high energy and the forces by which they interact, ie. worked in the field of physics, which is now called high-energy physics, or particle physics. He also did in-depth research into the role that symmetry plays in particle physics. Possessing truly fantastic abilities and the ability to penetrate deeply into the essence of physical problems, he was intolerant of vague arguments and superficial judgments. He subjected his own work to such ruthless critique that his publications are virtually error-free. Colleagues called him "the conscience of physics."

After a divorce that followed a short and unhappy first marriage, P. in 1934 married Francis Bertram. Experiencing a deep interest in philosophy and psychology, he took great pleasure in conversations with his friend C.G. Jung. He also had a high regard for art, music and theatre. During his vacation he liked to swim, wander through the mountains and forests of Switzerland. P.'s intellectual abilities were in sharp dissonance with his "ability" to work with his hands. His colleagues used to joke about the mysterious "Pauli effect", where the mere presence of a short, overweight scientist in a lab seemed to cause all sorts of breakdowns and accidents. In early December 1958, P. fell ill and soon, on December 15, he died.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, P. was awarded the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute (1952) and the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society (1958). He was a member of the Swiss Physical Society, the American Physical Society, the American Association for Basic Sciences, and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London.

Perhaps there would have been an unforeseen turn in the history of the creation of nuclear weapons if this amazing person at the center of the Manhattan Project.

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli went down in history not only as a brilliant German theoretical physicist, a pioneer in the field of quantum mechanics and a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945, but also as a person whose name is given to a mysterious and obscure phenomenon - the "Pauli effect", the essence of which is that the presence of some people negatively affects the course of experiments and the operation of precision instruments.

With Wolfgang Pauli, this happened all the time. His inability to make even the most elementary experimental devices work became legendary, as well as the fact that things and equipment broke down or entered into abnormal operation when he appeared.

Physicist Otto Stern, also a Nobel laureate and colleague of Pauli, refused to let him into his laboratory, arguing that "the number of 'guaranteed Pauli effects' observed was so great that it was simply impossible to ignore."

Source of misfortune

In fact, not only Stern, with whom, by the way, Pauli regularly dined, was afraid of the presence of Pauli's walking disaster in his laboratory. Other colleagues were also afraid of the “spectacular” appearance of Pauli and each time they prayed that, God forbid, he would not look at them when the experiment was going on in the laboratory and the impeccable operation of high-precision instruments was required.

There were good reasons for fear among colleagues. If Pauli entered the laboratory, the mechanisms would suddenly stop or burn out, glassware would shatter for no reason, leaks suddenly appeared in the vacuum, light bulbs exploded, relays burned out, a short circuit occurred ...

One day, Pauli decided to visit his friend, the famous astronomer Walter Baade, and first appeared at the Hamburg Observatory. Everyone remembered this “spectacular” visit of Pauli for a long time, because when he appeared at the observatory, a terrible accident immediately occurred, as a result of which the priceless refractor telescope almost collapsed.

However, the "Pauli effect" was so strong that it "worked" even at a distance. Thus, the case when, during an experiment, expensive measuring equipment in the laboratory of the physicist James Frank in the city of Göttingen suddenly failed and an explosion occurred, gained great fame. One of Frank's colleagues immediately recalled the "Pauli effect", but the very "source of misfortune" in this moment not only in the laboratory, but also in the city was not nearby.

Being a friend of Pauli, Frank sent him a letter to Zurich, where he lived at that time, and in joking tones described the trouble that had happened. What was Frank's astonishment when a response letter came from Pauli, in which he said that he was not in Zurich - he went to visit Niels Bohr and during a mysterious incident in Frank's laboratory, he was just returning by train and making a stop in Göttingen ...

On another occasion, when Pauli arrived in Princeton in 1950, a brand new, just bought and absolutely serviceable, expensive cyclotron immediately burned down there. It burned down completely inexplicably, except for the “Pauli effect”.

And joking with Pauli about his “effect” didn’t work either. Once, fellow pranksters decided to demonstrate an artificial "Pauli effect": in the audience where he lectured, they connected the clock with a relay to the door. By design, the clock was supposed to stop as soon as Pauli opens the door and enters. Pauli entered, but the clock kept running because the relay had failed.

A similar case was with the chandelier, which other pranksters hung on a rope and which was supposed to fall spectacularly when Pauli appeared (but not on his head, of course). The chandelier remained hanging in place, as the rope was tightly wedged ...

Unclear Mechanisms

There were other mysterious things going on with and around Pauli. For example, once he was sitting at a table in a cafe and looking out the window, thinking about the color red and the peculiarities of its perception. The scientist's eyes looked distantly at an empty car, which was in the parking lot opposite the cafe. Under his gaze, the car suddenly flared up, and the color red became a reality.

In another case, again in a cafe, everyone was smeared with cream. Everyone except Paulie.

At the solemn opening ceremony in Zurich in 1948 of the Jung Institute, at the official reception, when Pauli appeared, a large Chinese vase of flowers unexpectedly fell from his seat. The water from the vase spattered the elegant costumes of many high-ranking guests. There was not a single drop on Pauli's clothes.

In general, it was noticed that the “destructive” that came from Pauli, for all its “showiness”, did not cause him the slightest harm. This was written by one of his close friends, the German physicist Rudolf Peierls, who repeatedly witnessed the destructive impact of his friend on the environment: “It seemed that he was uttering some kind of conspiracy that influenced people or objects in his environment, especially in physical laboratories , leading to various accidents and accidents ... but none of these accidents caused harm or trouble to himself.

And although, as Stern argued, the number of “guaranteed Pauli effects” was large, nevertheless, colleagues did not consider them with scientific point vision. Stories about the "Pauli effect" entered the scientific folklore as a joke, an anecdote, and generally something frivolous.

But Pauli himself did not think so. He was convinced that his “effect” was not mere accidents, but a clear pattern with mechanisms that were still unclear to science.

Technique and mysticism

Such a conviction was based on very specific and rather unpleasant physical sensations that Pauli experienced every time before something was about to happen.

According to him, he had a premonition of impending trouble. It was a kind of internal tension that lasted as long as the trouble did not happen. After that, Pauli felt a strange and special release and great relief.

Nowadays, scientists have tried to understand the "Pauli effect" and explain this phenomenon from a purely scientific point of view. In a group of subjects aged 20 to 55 years, the electrical potential was measured on their palms.

The fact is that each of us has a constant electric field, and on the surface of the skin as a result of various biochemical processes occurring inside the body, there is an electric potential. As a rule, it does not exceed 0.05V. However, in certain circumstances it can "jump" up to almost 10V.

And the scientists began to measure this skin potential in various states of the subjects: they compared the potential of happy and sad people, hungry and full, calm and nervous, confident and insecure, relaxed and focused ...

The results obtained convincingly showed that the electric potential changes quite significantly under different states of a person, and the technique reacts very sensitively to these changes and can begin to "bewilder".

This is especially true of individual technology, which instantly recognizes the emotional state of its owner. And if that person has a negative in the emotional sphere at the moment, then the technique can give out a very specific reaction. She also "baddies" with people immersed in their own thoughts, under stress, upset feelings, and especially with "outsiders".

But equipment in public places reacts to the emotional sphere much more calmly, as it quickly “gets used” to a large number of people and does not divide users into “us” and “them”.

All these experiments are, of course, interesting and give food for thought; however, they could not clearly explain the "Pauli effect". Why was he, among many scientists of that time, a “stranger” for technology, and so “terrible” that technology began to break down when he appeared? Maybe the huge electric field that the scientist “wore” on himself is to blame? But even if this is so, how to explain the destructive impact of Pauli, even at a distance?

The technique clearly “felt” a different force emanating from Pauli than just an electric field, even if it was great.

The Swedish theorist Oskar Klein, who was a superskeptic and unbeliever all his life, being familiar with Pauli and seeing what was going on around that, on the one hand, argued that the “Pauli effect” is an excellent example of how, based on reliable facts, one can make it obvious wrong conclusions. However, at the same time, Klein could not help but admit that this effect was too strange and that "this case would be a very convincing demonstration of the" supernatural "- when certain demonic personalities can influence the objects around them, causing some mysterious forces to act."

Dream Strangers

Indeed, there was mysticism in Pauli's life. More precisely, mysticism was in his dreams. Starting in 1946, two strangers began to appear in his dreams - a young blond and an older bearded brunette of oriental appearance, whom Pauli conditionally called "Persian". These two mysterious people began to teach Pauli "new physics".

Pauli described the "course of study" in private letters to his friend Carl Jung. However, Pauli's "night secret" until the end of the 1980s was behind "seven seals", since Pauli's wife for some reason had an extremely negative attitude towards her husband's passion for Jung's ideas and tried to keep this part of her famous husband's biography hidden from researchers for a long time. And it's a pity, because the "Jungian touch" in Pauli's life is probably even more interesting than his "official canon" and certainly much more mysterious.

So, "Blond" explained to the scientist the special importance of the principle of rotation, but the main thing is that it is necessary to introduce the feminine principle or soul into human science, which, by the way, has not yet been done.

The "Persian" was more severe and often said strange things that Pauli could not quite understand or understand at all. Among the many cryptic phrases of the "Persian" Pauli, I remember one that the bearded man said when Pauli asked if he was just his own shadow. This question made the Persian very angry, and he replied: "I am between you and the light, so you are my shadow, and not vice versa."

Pauli, being an adherent of the teachings of Carl Jung, really believed that both of his night counterparts were nothing more than hypostases of his own unconscious. However, the scientist was embarrassed by the fact that the words and behavior of these two very different characters from his dreams constantly came into conflict with the role that was “written out” for them in Jung's theory of the unconscious, and often went beyond it.

Perhaps, representatives of other worlds actually got in touch with Pauli? "Pers", by the way, directly said that Pauli would not understand physics on his mother tongue. What kind of language it was and what kind of world it was - for the scientist (and for us) remained a mystery.

But it is known that Pauli was not allowed to develop atomic bomb. Not because he was a bad scientist - on the contrary, he was a brilliant scientist. But here's the "effect"...

And although colleagues treated this “effect” as a joke, nevertheless, in America, where the bomb was being developed and where Pauli was forced to leave during World War II, fleeing the Nazis, they decided that it was not worth the risk.

Of course, no one told the venerable and respected Pauli about this directly. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, which was engaged in the development of nuclear weapons, personally wrote a letter to Pauli, in which he explained in detail why it was more expedient for him, Wolfgang Pauli, to be left out of this terribly classified work and what he should do instead of inventing a bomb ...

In general, when the rest of Pauli's colleagues worked in a secret laboratory, Pauli himself ... wrote articles at home. High-quality, purely scientific works, often under different names, which he published in various journals, trying to give the Germans the impression that physicists in America are not doing anything so suspicious and are not doing any research.

Later, Pauli was incredibly glad that he happily managed to avoid participating in the creation of this truly infernal weapon. And how happy we are...

Marina Sitnikova

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli(German Wolfgang Ernst Pauli; April 25, 1900, Vienna - December 15, 1958, Zurich) - Nobel Prize in Physics for 1945.

Wolfgang Pauli was born in Vienna in the family of a doctor and professor of chemistry, Wolfgang Josef Pauli (now Wolf Pascheles, 1869-1955), originally from a prominent Prague Jewish family Pascheles-Utitz, who changed his name in 1898 and converted to the Catholic faith shortly before his marriage in 1899. Wolfgang Pauli's mother, the feuilletonist Berta Camille Pauli (née Schütz, 1878-1927), was the daughter of the famous Jewish writer Friedrich Schütz (1844-1908). Pauli's younger sister - Herta Pauli (1909-1973) - also became a writer. The second name Pauli received in honor of his god-uncle, physicist Ernst Mach.

Wolfgang studied at the University of Munich with Arnold Sommerfeld. There, at Sommerfeld's request, the 20-year-old Pauli wrote a review for the Physical Encyclopedia on general relativity, a monograph that remains a classic to this day. Later he taught in Göttingen, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Princeton University (USA) and at the Zurich Electrotechnical School (Switzerland). The name of Pauli is associated with such a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics as spin elementary particle; he predicted the existence of neutrinos and formulated the "forbidding principle" - the Pauli principle, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945. In 1958 he was awarded the Max Planck Medal, and later that year Wolfgang Pauli died of cancer in Zurich.

Scientific achievements

Pauli has made significant contributions to modern physics, especially in the field of quantum mechanics. He rarely published his work, preferring an intense exchange of letters with his colleagues, especially Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, with whom he was a close friend. For this reason, many of his ideas are found only in these letters, which were often passed on and copied. Pauli seems to have little concern for the fact that, due to the small number of publications, most of his work was almost unknown to the general public. However, some facts have become known:

• 1924: Pauli introduces a new degree of freedom into quantum mechanics in order to eliminate the existing inconsistency in the interpretation of observables. molecular spectra. This degree of freedom was identified in 1925 by G. Uhlenbeck and S. Goudsmit as the electron spin. At the same time, Pauli formulates his exclusion principle, which, apparently, became his main contribution to quantum mechanics.
• 1926: Shortly after Heisenberg's publication of the matrix representation of quantum mechanics, Pauli applies this theory to describe the observed spectrum of hydrogen. This serves as a significant argument for the recognition of Heisenberg's theory.
• 1927: Pauli introduces spinors to describe the spin of an electron.
• 1930: Pauli postulates the neutrino. He realized that during the beta decay of a neutron into a proton and an electron, the laws of conservation of energy and momentum can be fulfilled only if another, hitherto unknown particle is emitted. Since at that time it was impossible to prove the existence of this particle, Pauli postulated the existence of an unknown particle. The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi later named this particle "neutron": neutrino. Experimental proof of the existence of the neutrino appeared only in 1954.

Personal qualities

In the field of physics, Pauli was known as a perfectionist. At the same time, he did not limit himself only to his works, but also ruthlessly criticized the mistakes of his colleagues. He became the "conscience of physics", often referring to the work as "completely wrong", or commenting something like this: "Not only is this wrong, it doesn't even reach the point of being wrong!" In the circles of his colleagues, there was such a joke about this: “After his death, Pauli is honored with an audience with God. Pauli asks God why the fine structure constant is 1/137. God nods, goes to the blackboard and starts writing equation after equation at a frightening pace. Pauli looks at first with great satisfaction, but soon begins to shake his head strongly and resolutely.

Another anecdote tells how Heisenberg presented his new theory to Pauli. As a response, he received a letter in which a square was drawn with the note "I can draw like Titian." At the bottom, in small handwriting, was written: “Only details are missing.”

Pauli was also famous for the fact that in his presence, sensitive experimental equipment stopped working or even suddenly broke down. This phenomenon is known as the "Pauli effect".

In Vienna, Pauli studied at the Federal Gymnasium No. 19 at Gymnasiumstrasse 83, 1190 Vienna. His classmate was the future Nobel Prize winner Richard Kuhn, who received in 1938 nobel prize in chemistry. They also say that one day in a physics lesson, the teacher made a mistake on the blackboard that he could not find even after a long search. To the great joy of his students, he calls out in despair: “Pauli, tell me finally what is wrong. You must have found it long ago."

Dialogue Pauli - Jung

A lesser known area of ​​his work, which has only been closely studied since 1990, arose from a collaboration with the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. From their correspondence, which both scientists conducted from 1932 to 1958, it becomes clear that Pauli owns most of the concept of synchronicity, which was introduced by C. G. Jung, and, in addition, part of the refinement of the concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes, which are of paramount importance. significance for Jung's work.

An essential part of this dialogue is still an unresolved psychophysical problem, the unification of the collective psycho with matter, the deep roots of the inner world of a person with the outside world, which Jung referred to as unus mundus(one world) and Pauli as the psychophysical reality of unity.

The current state of the analysis of his notes shows that these studies of Pauli were not only of purely academic interest, but took their origins from their own deep-seated experiences - existential reflections on the archetype "spirit of matter".