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The University of Hamburg profited, above all in the 1920's, from
the proximity of the centres of theoretical physics, Copenhagen and
Göttingen. In the summer term of 1922, Wolfgang Pauli joined his friend
Wilhelm Lenz as a "scientific unskilled worker", i.e.
an assistant. After his stay in Copenhagen, Pauli habilitated in 1924 in
Hamburg. In the same year he discovered the"Ausschliessungsprinzip". |
Wolfgang Pauli in Kopenhagen, ca. 1925
© CERN, Geneva |
Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli
© Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen |
1927 was dominated by an intense discussion between
Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, Pascual Jordan and Wolfgang Pauli on the
"Lösung des Quantenrätsels", as Pauli called it in a letter to Bohr.
At the International Conferences of Physicists in Como and Brussels, the new
results were presented for the first time in public. The fifth Solvay
Conference was notable for arguments between Bohr and Einstein over the
"Kopenhagener Deutung" of the quantum theory , in which the statistical
interpretation of microphysical processes was the centrepiece. The numerous
contributions to the discussion by the young Pauli demonstrate his
self-confidence and the influence he had gained meanwhile in the scientific
community. |
