pauli

Pauli commonly refers to Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958), Austrian-born theoretical physicist whose work helped lay the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Pauli studied in Vienna and earned a doctorate in physics, and spent portions of his career at institutions in Göttingen and Zurich.

His most famous result is the Pauli exclusion principle, formulated in 1925, which states that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. This principle explains the structure of atoms and the periodic table. Pauli also made early contributions to the description of electron spin, introducing what are now called Pauli matrices—three 2x2 complex matrices used to represent spin-1/2 systems—and helped develop the algebraic language of spinors and two-component wave equations, later known as the Pauli equation.

In 1930 Pauli proposed the existence of the neutrino to account for missing energy and angular momentum in beta decay, a hypothesis confirmed experimentally decades later. He remained active in theoretical physics and contributed to the mathematical framework underlying quantum theory, including concepts that were extended in relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. For his discovery of the exclusion principle, Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945. He spent his later years in Zurich, where he died in 1958. Pauli's ideas continue to influence many areas of physics, from atomic structure to the study of fundamental symmetries.