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Wolfgang Ernest Friedrich Pauli was born in Vienna, Austria on April 25, 1900. His father Wolfgang Joseph Pauli was born on September 11, 1869. He was a chemistry professor and a physician. Pauli's mother, Berta Camilla Schutz, was born on November 29, 1878. She worked for a newpaper in Vienna. However, Pauli was not an only child. He had a sister, Hertha Ernestina Pauli, who is six years younger than him. Pauli got his middle name from his grandfather, Ernest Mach, a philosopher and a physicist. Wolfgang Pauli was Jewish from birth, but he was not aware oh this until his mid-teens. His father was converted to Catholicism before his marriage to Pauli's mother, so he was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.
Pauli had a great gift in math and natural sciences were recognized at an early age. He attemded Doblinger, Gymanasium High School. Han Adolf Bauer, a university lecturer, first introduced Einstein's general theory of relatively to Pauli and gave hime extra tuition in mathematics. Only two months after graduation Pauli published his first paper on Einstein's general theory of relatively. In 1918, Wolfgang moved to Munich, where he studied physics at Ludwig-Maximilian University under the professor Arnold Sommerfield. IN his first semester, Pauli wrote a long lengthy article for the Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences explaining the theory of relatively. Even Albert Einstein was very well impressed with this article. After six semesters of hard work, Pauli received his doctorate in 1921 for a thesis on the quantum theory of molecular hydrogen, and the "Encyclopedia Article" was published which was about the same as a 250 pages book. For five years, 1923-1928, he was a lecturer at the University of Hamburg.
Wolfgang Pauli had many great contributions to quantum mechanics in his lifetime. Majority oh his work did not get published and he was not credited for some of his work. He did receive credit for the most important things he contributed. In 1925, Pauli came up with the exclusion principle. "It simply stated that no two electrons in an atom can be at the same time in the same state or configuration to account for the observed patterns of light emission from atoms. The exclusion principle subsequently has been generalized to include a whole class of particles of which the electron is only one member." ((2010). Encyclopaedia Britannica) A year later he secured Heisenberg's theory by using it to observed the spectrum of the hydrogen atom.
November 15, 1927 Berta committed sucide. Pauli was very devastated, so he sought help from a psychologist. A year after his mother's death, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Finally, Pauli decded to marry Kathe Margarethe Deppner in late 1929. In a couple of months Pauli began to drink heavily because his marriage was not working our as planned. They divorced less than a year. Focusing more on his work, he recognized that neutral particles existed with low mass but with a spin, neutrino which is known has a beta particle. The neutrino was not experimented with until after Pauli's death. He was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1930. Eventually, he remarried on the fourth of April in 1934 to Franca Bertram. During this second marriage Pauli and Franca had no children together. Pauli moved to the United States in 1940, where he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. Pauli lived in the United States for six years, becoming a naturalized citizen before he thought of returning home to Zurich. In 1945, Pauli received the NObel Prize in Physics. He was highly nominated by Einstein himself. In 1958, Pauli was awarded the Max Planck medal. In that same year, he fell ill with pancreatic cancer. Pauli died on December 15, 1958.
Today many scientists still refer back to Wolfgang's work which was so thorough. Wolfgang had a great impact on today's scientists. Without the discovery of the beta particle by Pauli many of equations we do today would have existed. All the pieces of the puzzle would not fit together if Pauli did not put in as much work into the quantum mechanics as he did. Now today we can understand the science world better as a teenager, an adult, and a scientist. |
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