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 equivalence principle is key.
Waves and particles are dual.
The photoelectric effect proves quanta.
Compton scattering is inelastic.
The Rydberg constant is universal.
Atomic number determines properties.
The periodic table is explained by electron shells.
Pauli matrices describe spin.
Chirality in weak interactions.
Parity is violated.
The neutral current is mediated by Z boson.
Gauge theories are renormalizable.
The Higgs mechanism gives mass.
String theory is speculative.
Quantum gravity is the holy grail.
The anthropic principle is tautological.
Multiverse is philosophy, not physics.
Dark matter is inferred.
The expanding universe is dynamic.
Redshift indicates recession.
Contemporaries of Wolfgang Pauli
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958).