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Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958):
A Brief Anecdotal Biography
Roger R. Festa1
Brien McMahon High School
Norwalk, CT 06854
One of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics
is the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Every student of introductory
chemistry encounters the phenomenon that no two electrons
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in an atom have the same set of quantum numbers. Yet, it is
theorized that each orbital contains two electrons. In 1925,
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when he was 25 years old and only a year out of graduate
school, Wolfgang Pauli determined that not only can an or-
bital accommodate a maximum of two electrons but also that
these paired electrons must have opposite spins.
Wolfgang Pauli was the son of a distinguished chemistry
professor at the University of Vienna. His mother was a
journalist with a local newspaper. Ernst Mach, the noted
philosopher and physicist, was Pauli’s godfather. Pauli was
baptized a Catholic, and we can assume that he attended strict
Catholic schools since, during the Age of Modernism, he found
it necessary to read Einstein’s theory of relativity “se-
cretly.”
After high school, Pauli majored in theoretical physics at
the University of Munich. Among his classmates was Werner
Heisenberg. His major professor was Arnold Sommerfeld, the
foremost theoretical physicist of the time. When Pauli was
only a sophomore, he was asked by Sommerfeld to write the
entry on the theory of relativity for the prestigious Encyklo-
paedie der mathematischen Wissenschaften.
Pauli was awarded his doctorate in 1922, and he then began
a series of investigations of the anomalous Zeeman effect.
These studies resulted in the development of the exclusion
principle, which was announced in 1925 in Zeitschrift fur
Physik. Pauli concluded2
There can never be two or more equivalent electrons in
for which in a strong field the values of all the quantum numbers.
are the same. If an electron is present, for which these quantum
numbers ... have definite values, then this state is “occupied.”
Following the announcement of the exclusion principle, the
work of Heisenberg and Schroedinger soon gave shape to a
consolidated and modern quantum mechanics. Pauli prepared
a monograph updating the field in 1933 in the Handbuch der
Physik. The article was published again in the 1958 edition
of the Handbuch, still unchanged after 25 years.
In 1928, the Swiss Board of Education appointed Pauli
professor at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in
Zurich. Pauli has been described by his students as a poor
lecturer. He would speak softly, often mumbling to himself,
and write sporadically on the chalkboard in small illegible
script. His colleagues commented that he was re-thinking the
subject while he was lecturing. Although his pedagogical
methodology was questionable, his students were inspired by
his thoughts.
In addition to his eccentric teaching techniques, Pauli was
also somewhat of an anomaly in the laboratory. While un-
questionably the greatest theoretical physicist of his time, he
held a certain contempt for experimental physics. There ex-
isted a humorous incompatibility between Pauli and George
von Hevesy (who developed the radioactive tracer technique)
Avon High School
Roger R. Festa
Brien McMahon High School
when they shared a room at Niels Bohr’s institute in Copen-
hagen. Hevesy used the facility as a laboratory, while it was
Pauli’s office where he rocked in his chair as he contemplated
his theories. When Hevesy complained that Pauli’s rocking
caused his instruments to shake, Pauli was amazed that He-
vesy’s research (the search for hafnium) had not yet been
completed.
Pauli’s personal attributes often did not sit as well with his
colleagues and acquaintances as did his scientific genius. He
was never loathe to criticize even the masters; as a child he
reportedly tore apart Jules Verne’s “From the Earth to the
Moon” for its erroneous description of the diminishing effect
of gravity as a spaceship leaves the earth.
Among Pauli’s early targets was his sister, Hertha. While
he enjoyed teaching her about nature, her occasional outbursts
of defiance usually precipitated a violent exchange. Later, he
doled out a decidedly acidic opinion to the distinguished
physicist, Paul Ehrenfest3
Pauli was very rude. Ehrenfest told him quite frankly, “I like your
publications better than I like you,” to which the young Pauli crush-
ingly replied, “Strange, my feeling about you is just the opposite.”
Despite his unabashed moxie toward his peers and his un-
intelligible mumbling in the lecture hall, Pauli was profoundly
respected by both his colleagues and his students. The ulti-
mate flattery of caricature bestowed upon Pauli by his stu-
dents, the so-called “Pauli effect,” is a legend of twentieth-
century physics. Science historian Barbara Lovett Cline has
1
The author wishes to thank Dr. Bern Dibner and Mr. Joseph H.
Chillington of the Burndy History of Science Library in Norwalk,
Connecticut, for their hospitality and excellent assistance.
2
Gillispie, C. C. (Editor), “Dictionary of Scientific Biography,”
Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1974, X, p. 422.
3
Cline, B. L., “The Questioners,” Thomas Y. Crowell, New York,
1965, pp. 142-143.
4
Fine, L. W., “Chemistry,” Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1978,
p. 521.
an atom,
..
"Profiles in Chemistry" is a biographical feature, highlighting the
contributions of distinguished chemists in the contexts of their lives. The
column is designed as a curriculum enrichment instrument, allowing the
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munity in an immediately usable format.
Roger R. Festa received his BA from St.
Michael's College in 1972, his MAT from
the University of Vermont in 1979, and is
presently working on his CAS at Fairfield
University.
Mr. Festa has taught both high school
chemistry and biology. He is currently on
the faculty of Brien McMahon High School
in Norwalk, Connecticut.
He is an active member of the ACS,
New York Academy of Sciences, American Institute of Chemists, and
American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is chairman
of the High School Chemistry Committee of the Western Connecticut
Section, vice-chairman of its Education Committee, and a member of
its Executive Board. He has published essays on science, history, and
education in Chemunity, The. Fairfield Chemest, and The Norwalk Hour,
and he has reviewed curricular materials for Science Books and
Films.
Volume 58 Number 3 March 1981 273
written extensively on the Pauli effect. She maintains that
Pauli was incredibly clumsy and that this handicap was well
understood and anticipated by his associates. “He approached
the simplest mechanism with deep suspicion,” she writes, “and
it was rumored that before he could qualify for a driving li-
cense he first had to take one hundred lessons.”3
Legend has preserved a bevy of illustrations of the Pauli
effect. Laboratory equipment would fall or crack when he was
in the vicinity, and a serious explosion at the University of
Gottingen occurred as the train transporting Pauli pulled into
the local station. When he was expected at a conference in
Italy, some students wished to assure the demonstration of
the Pauli effect when he walked into the conference room.
They rigged a chandelier with a rope and pulley, intending to
send it crashing to the floor as he entered. When Pauli ap-
peared in the doorway and they released the chandelier, the
274 Journal of Chemical Education
rope slipped and wedged in one of the pulleys, leaving the
fixture suspended near the ceiling. “Noting the elaborate
apparatus which had failed its inventors, Pauli told them
gleefully that they had succeeded in demonstrating a typical
Pauli effect.”3
Cline concludes that the Pauli effect “could be understood
as a compliment to its namesake. Theorists quite often are
awkward in the laboratory, and ascribing such vast destructive
powers to Pauli was one way of saying that, as a theoretical
physicist, he was superb.”3
Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1945, “for
his discovery of the exclusion (Pauli) principle.”4 Pauli became
seriously ill in December 1958, and he died within a few
days.