Wolfgang Pauli
Formulated the exclusion principle
Most quoted
"When I was young, I thought I was the best formalist of my time. I thought I was a revolutionary. When the big problems would come, I would be the one to solve them. But then the great revolution came, it was Heisenberg and Dirac who made it. I was only a classicist."
— from Self-reflection
"The layman always means, when he says 'reality,' that he is speaking of something self-evidently known; whereas to me it seems the most important and exceedingly difficult task of our time is to work on the construction of a new idea of reality."
— from Letter to Markus Fierz, 1954
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
— from Attributed to Max Planck, but often quoted by Pauli in discussions of scientific change
All quotes by Wolfgang Pauli (673)
The transcendent function unites.
Coniunctio is the chymical wedding.
The lapis philosophorum is the self.
Solve et coagula.
The nigredo is the dark night.
Albedo follows purification.
Rubedo completes the work.
The prima materia is chaos.
Mercurius is the spirit.
The king and queen unite.
The dragon devours its tail.
The green lion eats the sun.
The pelican feeds its young.
The phoenix rises from ashes.
The white swan is purity.
The red lion is the goal.
The athanor is the furnace of transformation.
The philosopher's egg is the vessel.
Distillation separates essences.
Fermentation brings life.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).