Remembering the "Conscience of Physics"

I have been consistently against books on popular science ever since I started recognizing myself and the mistakes I made in my life. In my opinion, no teenage kids should be allowed to read popular scince books, because such books often impart a false pride and arrogance to very medicore people like me. We, in our teeange arrogance, fail to recognize our very mediocre talent and pursue very specialized brances such as the sciences, which is not meant for us. It's like that Latin adage goes, "Quod licet Jovi, non licet Bovi" (What is permitted to Jupiter, is not permitted to the ox).

However, while popular science books will highlight the life of likes of Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrodinger, it would never metnion the confusion that led Paul Ehrenfest to shoot himself, or the frustration that led Boltzmann to commit suicide.

Popular science books also do not talk about the pioneering role paid by a great scientist, Wolfgang Pauli.His role was that of "conscience of science." Pauli could see though what was happening, and bnever hesitated to call the spade a space. If Pauli said something was weong, it eventially was! That was the intellectual level of that person.

"Pauli made many important contributions in his career as a physicist, primarily in the subject of Quantum Mechanics He seldom published papers, preferring lengthy correspondences with colleagues (such as Bohr and Heisenberg , with whom he had close friendships.) Many of his ideas and results were never published and appeared only in his letters, which were often copied and circulated by their recipients. Pauli was apparently unconcerned that much of his work thus went uncredited."

"We can imagine the magnitude of the loss when we read Pauli's 12-page letter of 19 October 1926, where he adumbrates the uncertainty relations by pointing out that "one can look at the world with the p-eye and one can look at it with the q-eye. But if one wants to open both eyes at the same time, one goes crazy." This letter is, strange to say, not mentioned by Heisenberg in his recollections about collaborating with Pauli. From reading Heisenberg's responses to the missing Pauli letters, one gets the impression that much of Heisenberg's work was inspired by Pauli's ideas and suggestions."

"Pauli was determined to understand and criticize all of the new ideas that were emerging in the rapidly growing physics of his time. His criticisms were accurate and often merciless, and earned him the title 'the conscience of physics'. When Pauli condemned a piece of work as trivial or sloppy, his verdict was final. His friend Paul Ehrenfest called him 'God's whip'."

Wolfgang Pauli died on 15th December, 1958. ___________________________________________________________________
Sources:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v420/n6916/full/420607a.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Ernst_Pauli
http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-2/captions/p43box1.html
http://bullarchive.web.cern.ch/bullarchive/0034/art3/Text_E.html
http://www.cerncourier.com/main/article/40/6/10
http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-2/p43.html#box1
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Pauli.html