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{{Infobox scientist
| name = Wolfgang Pauli
| birth_date = {{birth date|1900|4|25|df=y}}
| birth_place = Vienna, Austria-Hungary
| death_date = {{death date and age|1958|12|15|1900|4|25|df=y}}
| death_place = Zurich, Switzerland
| nationality = Austrian
| fields = Theoretical physics
| workplaces = ETH Zurich; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
| known_for = Pauli exclusion principle, electron spin, the neutrino hypothesis, spin-statistics theorem
| prizes = Nobel Prize in Physics (1945)
}}

'''Wolfgang Ernst Pauli''' (25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist, author of the exclusion principle, of the neutrino hypothesis, and of the spin–statistics theorem. He received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle."

Pauli was a prodigy: his 237-page encyclopedia article on relativity, written at twenty-one, was praised by Einstein and remained a standard reference for decades. In 1925 he stated the '''exclusion principle''' — no two electrons in an atom may share the same set of four quantum numbers — which accounts for the shell structure of atoms and hence for the whole shape of the periodic table. To do so he had to postulate a fourth, two-valued quantum number, shortly afterwards identified as electron spin by Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit. In 1927 he wrote spin into non-relativistic quantum mechanics using the '''Pauli matrices'''.

In December 1930, faced with the continuous energy spectrum of beta decay — which appeared to violate conservation of energy — Pauli proposed in an open letter to a conference at Tübingen, addressed to "Dear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen," an undetected neutral particle of very small mass carried off in the decay. Fermi named it the neutrino. Pauli called it a desperate remedy and doubted it would ever be detected; it was confirmed by Cowan and Reines in 1956, two years before his death. In 1940 he proved the '''spin–statistics theorem''', connecting half-integer spin to Fermi statistics and integer spin to Bose statistics.

He was famously severe as a critic — the phrase "not even wrong" is his — and in later life carried on a long correspondence with Carl Jung on archetypes and the psychology of scientific discovery, publishing an essay on Kepler in that vein.

==On this wiki==

Pauli's two great contributions are received very differently here.

'''The exclusion principle is taken as real but unexplained.''' The standard account derives it from the antisymmetry of the many-electron wavefunction, which is a restatement rather than a mechanism, and researchers here treat that as an opening. [[Wladimir Guglinski]], in "[[Mechanism for Pauli's Exclusion Principle]]", proposes that the principle follows from the participation of the ether in the equilibrium of the electron shell, and argues that quantum mechanics as it stands cannot account for diamagnetism. [[Stephan J G Gift]]'s "[[A Quantum Theory of Magnetism]]" (''Progress in Physics'', 2009) works in the same territory. [[Martin Müller]] developed a "Pauli pairs" model of the strong nuclear force. The nuclear shell model that rests on the exclusion principle is examined by [[Roger A Rydin]] in "[[New Magic Numbers in the Continent of Isotopes]]" (2011) and by [[Xavier Borg]] in "[[Magic Numbers Derivation from Variable Phase Nuclear Model]]" (2006); see [[:Category:Nuclear Structure]] and [[:Category:Atomic Structure]].

'''The neutrino is disputed outright.''' This is one of the sharper disagreements on the wiki. [[Ricardo Carezani]]'s [[Autodynamics]] holds that the missing beta-decay energy is an artefact of an incorrect relativistic energy relation, and that no extra particle is needed at all; [[David de Hilster]] argues the case in "[[The Neutrino: Doomed from Inception]]" (''[[Proceedings of the NPA]]'', 2011). Others accept a neutrino but give it a structure: [[Daniel H Deutsch]]'s "[[Electromechanical Physical Models of the Electron, Proton, Neutron, and Neutrino]]" (''[[Physics Essays]]'', 1991) is an example.

That disagreement should be stated fairly. Neutrinos have been detected directly since 1956, from reactors, accelerators, the Sun and supernova 1987A, and neutrino oscillation was established around 1998–2001; the autodynamics position requires all of this to be reinterpreted, and mainstream physics regards it as settled. What is genuinely open in mainstream physics is narrower but real: the absolute neutrino mass scale is still unmeasured, and whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle remains undecided.

More broadly, Pauli's role in the Copenhagen consensus places him among the targets of the realist critique collected in [[:Category:Quantum Theory]] — see [[Evert Jan Post]]'s "[[The Electromagnetic Origin of Quantization and the Ensuing Changes in Copenhagne Interpretation]]" (2002) and [[Franco Selleri]]'s "[[Quantum Paradoxes and Physical Reality]]" (1990).

==See also==

* [[Quantum Theory]]
* [[Erwin Schrödinger]]
* [[Werner Heisenberg]]
* [[Niels Bohr]]
* [[Autodynamics]]
* [[Atomic Structure]]

[[Category:Scientist|Pauli Wolfgang]]
[[Category:Quantum Theory]]
[[Category:Atomic Structure]]
[[Category:Nuclear Structure]]
[[Category:Particle Physics]]

Wolfgang Pauli - Revision history

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