Wolfgang Pauli

Facts

Wolfgang Pauli

Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.

Wolfgang Pauli
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1945

Born: 25 April 1900, Vienna, Austria

Died: 15 December 1958, Zurich, Switzerland

Affiliation at the time of the award: Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

Prize motivation: “for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle”

Prize share: 1/1

Work

In Niels Bohr’s model of the atom, electrons move in fixed orbits around a nucleus. As this model developed, electrons were assigned certain quantum numbers corresponding to distinct states of energy and movement. In 1925, Wolfgang Pauli introduced two new numbers and formulated the Pauli principle, which proposed that no two electrons in an atom could have identical sets of quantum numbers. It was later discovered that protons and neutrons in nuclei could also be assigned quantum numbers and that Pauli’s principle applied here too.

To cite this section
MLA style: Wolfgang Pauli – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Sun. 1 Dec 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1945/pauli/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Nobel Prizes and laureates

Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.

See them all presented here.

Illustration

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.