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)
Calcination reduces to basics.
The great work is inner.
Alchemy is psychology.
The unconscious is alchemical gold.
Projection is the key.
Introjection reverses it.
The alchemist is his own material.
The opus is lifelong.
Success is rare.
The rose is the symbol of completion.
The cross is suffering.
The square is matter.
The circle is spirit.
Quaternity is totality.
The tetramorph is the four living creatures.
The apocalypse reveals.
The new Jerusalem is the self.
The lamb is sacrifice.
The whore of Babylon is the shadow.
The beast is instinct.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).