Pauli's ability to describe complex relationships clearly was
demonstrated after the publication of the Encyclopedia article in 1921 on the
theory of relativity, and a second time in his chapter Quantum Theory in the
"Handbuch der Physik" of 1926. The physicists jokingly referred to it as the
"Old Testament".
While Pauli was working on this article throughout almost the
whole of 1925, the "new quantum mechanics" arose, which was introduced by
Werner Heisenberg's fundamental work on matrix mechanics. It thus happened that
Wolfgang Pauli did not participate initially in this new development. In
January 1926, however, he published the work "Ueber das Wasserstoffspektrum vom
Standpunkt der neuen Quantenmechanik". Thus he had recognized the importance of
the new method immediately and demonstrated its fruitfulness. Following this,
Werner Heisenberg wrote him on 3rd November 1925: "I do not need to tell you
how pleased I am with the new theory of hydrogen and how much I admire your
having published this theory so quickly".
In May 1927 Pauli published the work "Zur Quantenmechanik des
magnetischen Elektrons", in which he introduced the so-called "Pauli matrices".
This was a mathematical representation, still used today, of the property
"spin" in the physics of elementary particles and atoms. |
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