Wolfgang Pauli (25.04.1900-14.12.1958) — theoretical physicist. He was born in Vienna. He graduated from the University of Munich (1921). In 1921-22 he worked as assistant to M. Born at the University of Göttingen, in 1922 — 23 under N. Bohr at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, and in 1923 — 28 he was a Privatdozent at the University of Hamburg. From 1928 he was professor at the Zurich Polytechnic (except 1935 — 36, 1940-45, 1949-50 and 1954, when he worked in the USA at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton).
His work concerned many branches of modern theoretical physics, in whose development he took a direct part, in particular quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, relativity, quantum field theory, solid-state physics, nuclear physics and elementary particle physics. In 1924, to explain the hyperfine structure of spectral lines, he put forward the hypothesis of nuclear spin, proposing that nuclei have spin and magnetic moments. In 1924—25 he formulated one of the most important principles of modern theoretical physics, according to which two identical particles with half-integer spins cannot be in the same state — the Pauli exclusion principle (Nobel Prize, 1945). He explained the paramagnetism of the electron gas in a metal (1927) and the structure of the electron shells of atoms. Together with E. Fermi he introduced the concept of a strongly degenerate electron gas in metals. In 1927 he introduced spin into the new quantum mechanics and, to describe the spin of the electron, matrices (the Pauli spin matrices), and created the theory of electron spin. Together with W. Heisenberg he made an attempt in 1929 to formulate quantum electrodynamics, introducing a general scheme for the quantisation of fields and thereby laying the foundations of a systematic theory of field quantisation. He explained (1928) the hyperfine structure of atomic spectra.
In 1931 he put forward the hypothesis that the neutrino exists, and in 1933 he formulated the main properties of the neutrino. He is the author of fundamental studies in the theory of elementary particles and quantum fields, and of the meson theory of nuclear forces. In 1940 he proved the theorem on the connection between statistics and spin, and in 1941 he showed that the law of conservation of electric charge is connected with invariance under gauge transformations. In 1955 he formulated in its final form the CPT theorem, which expresses the symmetries of elementary particles.
A Fellow of the Royal Society. The H. Lorentz Medal (1930), the B. Franklin Medal (1952), the M. Planck Medal (1958) and others.