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In Our Time: Pauli's Exclusion Principle

Pauli's Exclusion Principle

06/04/2017

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Pauli's Exclusion Principle

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wolfgang Pauli and the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the key principles in quantum mechanics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and the life and ideas of Wolfgang Pauli who proposed it.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), whose Exclusion Principle is one of the key ideas in quantum mechanics. A brilliant physicist, at 21 Pauli wrote a review of Einstein's theory of general relativity and that review is still a standard work of reference today. The Pauli Exclusion Principle proposes that no two electrons in an atom can be at the same time in the same state or configuration, and it helps explain a wide range of phenomena such as the electron shell structure of atoms. Pauli went on to postulate the existence of the neutrino, which was confirmed in his lifetime. Following further development of his exclusion principle, Pauli was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for his 'decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature'. He also had a long correspondence with Jung, and a reputation for accidentally breaking experimental equipment which was dubbed The Pauli Effect.

With 

Frank Close
Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College, University of Oxford

Michela Massimi
Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh

and

Graham Farmelo
Bye-Fellow of Churchill College, University of Cambridge


Producer: Simon Tillotson.

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