Wolfgang Pauli Biography

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian-Swiss theoretical physicist, winner of Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the ‘Exclusion Principle’, also known as the ‘Pauli Principle’. He was born in Vienna and spent his career working as a theoretical physicist. He was a perfectionist who strived for absolute perfection in the scientific experiments performed by himself and others he worked with. His experiments led to the development of early concepts of quantum physics. He formulated the Pauli Exclusion Principle, perhaps his most important work, which states that no two electrons can exist in the same quantum state, identified by four quantum numbers including his new two-valued degree of freedom. He was also the first researcher to recognize the neutrino as an actual particle. This produced the best understanding available at the time of the structure of an atom. His path-breaking work was appreciated when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. He was nominated for this prestigious award by none other than Albert Einstein. His scientific career crossed paths with many of the great researchers in physics and he worked with several notable physicists including Niels Bohr and Max Born. In an era that produced many of the great physicists, he is counted among the greatest minds and one of the pioneers of quantum physics.