Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli
Pauli in 1945
Born
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli

(1900-04-25)25 April 1900
Died15 December 1958(1958-12-15) (aged 58)
Zurich, Switzerland
Citizenship
  • Austria
  • United States (from 1946)
  • Switzerland (from 1949)
Alma mater
  • University of Munich
    (Dr. phil.)
  • University of Göttingen
  • University of Copenhagen
Known for
Spouse
Franziska Bertram
(m. 1934)
Relatives
  • Wolf Pascheles (great-grandfather)
  • Hertha Pauli (sister)
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsQuantum physics
Institutions
  • University of Hamburg (1923–28)
  • ETH Zurich (1928–40, 1946–58)
  • Institute for Advanced Study (1940–46)
ThesisÜber das Modell des Wasserstoff-Molekülions (1921)
Doctoral advisorArnold Sommerfeld
Other academic advisors
Notable students
See list[2]
  • Felix Bloch
  • Hendrik Casimir
  • Max Delbrück
  • Charles Enz
  • Eugene Feenberg
  • Eugene Guth
  • Martin Gutzwiller
  • Josef-Maria Jauch
  • Nicholas Kemmer
  • Lev Landau
  • José Leite Lopes
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer
  • Rudolf Peierls
  • Maurice Pryce
  • Max Robert Schafroth
  • Felix Villars
Signature
Notes
His godfather was Ernst Mach. He is not to be confused with Wolfgang Paul, who called Pauli his "imaginary part",[3] a pun with the imaginary unit i.

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (/ˈpɔːli/ PAW-lee;[4] German: [ˈpaʊ̯li] ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein,[5] Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle".[6] The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter. To preserve the conservation of energy in beta decay, he posited the existence of a small neutral particle, dubbed the neutrino by Enrico Fermi. The neutrino was detected in 1956.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference peierls was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Wolfgang Pauli - Physics Tree". academictree.org. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  3. ^ Gerald E. Brown and Chang-Hwan Lee (2006): Hans Bethe and His Physics, World Scientific, ISBN 978-981-256-610-2, p. 338
  4. ^ "PAULI Definition & Meaning". dictionary.com. Retrieved 27 May 2025.
  5. ^ "Nomination Database: Wolfgang Pauli". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 17 November 2015.
  6. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945". The Nobel Foundation.