Malaspina Great Books, Established 1995; Created by Russell McNeil, PhD, Visitors:

With the growing importance of global warming, Climate News Live provides up-to-date news and information. This is a non-partisan source of timely news articles, current events, and the relevant topics that are shaping the public policy debate in the United States and elsewhere. ... (click on picture or headline above for more)

title author

Malaspina Great Books Blog

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained Russell McNeil, PhD Editor, Malaspina Great Books In 1862 the English literary critic and poet Matthew Arnold described Marcus Aurelius as "the most beautiful figure in history." The Stoicism of Aurelius is grounded in rationality and rests solidly on an ethical approach rooted in nature. Stoicism promises real happiness and joy in this life and a serenity that can never be soured by personal misfortune. This philosophy has universal appeal with practical implications on problems ranging from climate change and terrorism to the personal management of sickness, aging, depression and addiction. I truly believe that the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius has much to offer us now...(Click on book cover for more)

Category:	Modern Science Modern Literature
Name:	Wolfgang Pauli - Physics Series
Birth Year:	1900
Death Year:	1958
Representative Image:
Biography, Lectures, and Research Links:	Biography - Physics Series Blog Wolfgang Pauli SEARCH NOW: by title by author Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Austrian-American physicist (April 25, 1900- December 15, 1958), noted for his work on the theory of spin. He was born in Vienna to Wolfgang Joseph Pauli and Berta Camilla Schutz. His middle name was given in honor of his godfather, the physicist Ernst Mach. Pauli attended the Doblinger Gymnasium in Vienna, graduating with distinction in 1918. Only two months after graduation, he had published his first paper, on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He attended the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, working under Sommerfeld, where he received his doctorate in July 1921 for a thesis on the quantum theory of ionised molecular hydrogen. Sommerfeld asked Pauli to review relativity for the Encyklopaedie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, a German encyclopedia. Two months after receiving his doctorate, Pauli completed the article, which came to 237 pages. It was praised by Einstein; published as a monograph, and remains a standard reference on the subject to this day. He spent a year at the University of Gottingen as the assistant to Max Born, and the following year at what became the Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. He then spent 1923 to 1928 as a lecturer at the University of Hamburg. During this period, Pauli was instrumental in the development of the modern theory of quantum mechanics. In particular, he formulated the exclusion principle and the theory of nonrelativistic spin. (See below for a list of his scientific contributions.) In May 1929, Pauli left the Roman Catholic Church; in December that year, he married Kathe Margarethe Deppner. The marriage was an unhappy one, ending in divorce in 1930 after less than a year. In 1928, he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. He held visiting professorships at the University of Michigan in 1931, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1935. In 1934, he married Franciska Bertram. This marriage would last for the rest of his life. They had no children. The German annexation of Austria in 1938 made him a German citizen, which became a difficulty with the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Pauli moved to the United States in 1940, where he was Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. After the end of the war in 1945, he returned to Zurich, where he mostly remained for the rest of his life. Also in 1945, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery in 1925 of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle." He had been nominated for the prize by Einstein. Pauli died in Zurch on December 15, 1958. 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. The following are the most important results for which he has been credited: In 1924, Pauli proposed a new quantum degree of freedom to resolve inconsistencies between observed molecular spectra and the developing theory of quantum mechanics. He formulated the Pauli exclusion principle, perhaps his most important work, which stated that no two electrons could exist in the same quantum state. Uhlenbeck and Goudsmit later identified this degree of freedom as electronspin. In 1926, shortly after Heisenberg published the matrix theory of modern quantum mechanics, Pauli used it to derive the observed spectrum of the hydrogen atom. This result was important in securing credibility for Heisenberg's theory. In 1927, he introduced the Pauli matrices as a basis of spin operators, thus solving the nonrelativistic theory of spin. This work influenced Dirac in his discovery of the Dirac equation for the relativistic electron. In 1931, he proposed the existence of a hitherto unobserved neutral and massless particle, in order to explain the continuous spectrum of beta decay. In 1934, Fermi incorporated the particle, which he called a neutrino, into his theory of radioactive decay. The neutrino was first observed experimentally in 1959. In 1940, he proved the spin-statistics theorem, a critical result of quantum mechanics which states that particles with half-integer spin are fermions, while particles with integer spin are bosons. The Pauli Effect was named after his bizarre ability to break experimental equipment simply by being in the vicinity. Pauli himself was aware of his reputation, and delighted whenever the Pauli Effect manifested. Regarding physics, Pauli was famously perfectionist. This extended not just to his own work, but also to the work of his colleagues. As a result, he became known within the physics community as the "conscience of physics", the critic to whom his colleagues were accountable. He could be scathing in his dismissal of any theory he found lacking, often labelling it ganz falsch, utterly false. Famously, he once said of one such paper: "This isn't right. It isn't even wrong." According to a story well known in the physics community, after his death in 1958 Pauli was granted an audience with God. Pauli asked God why the fine structure constant has the value 1/(137.036...). God nodded, went to a blackboard, and began scribbling equations at a furious pace. Pauli watched Him with great satisfaction, but soon began shaking his head violently... [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Wolfgang Pauli.] The Great Books: Wolfgang Pauli Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Wolfgang Pauli. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Wolfgang Pauli. Post Comments, Questions or Suggestions! This database is maintained by Malaspina Great Books.
	Great Books Online: Amazon Search Search: Books Classical Music DVD Popular Music Software Video magazines Toys & Games Baby Computer & Video Games Electronics Wireless Phones Tools & Hardware Outdoor Living Kitchen & Housewares Camera & Photo All Products Keywords:
	Biographical & Documentary Video Research
Best Choice Books, Music, Art:	Lectures Vol 1: Electrodynamics Lectures Vol 2: Optics and Electron Theory Lectures Vol 3: Thermodynamics Lectures Vol 4: Statistical Mechanics Lectures Vol 5: Wave Mechanics Lectures Vol 6: Topics in Field Quantization General Principles of Quantum Mechanics Correspondence: Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg Atom and Archetype : The Pauli/Jung Letters Theory of Relativity The Message of the Atoms No Time to Be Brief Writings on Physics and Philosophy
Browse Books, Music, Art & Book Reviews:	Books from Alibris: Wolfgang Pauli Books from Amazon: Wolfgang Pauli
	Audiobooks at iTunes: Thousands of Classics
Library Catalogs:	COPAC UK: Wolfgang Pauli Library of Canada: Wolfgang Pauli Library of Congress: Wolfgang Pauli Other Library Catalogs: Wolfgang Pauli
External Links:	Research Links: Wolfgang Pauli Malaspina Canada Links: Wolfgang Pauli
Online Research:
Records from Related Period and Category:	Modern Science Modern Literature

About this Database:

This web page is part of a biographical database on Great Ideas. These are living ideas that have shaped, defined and directed world culture for over 2,500 years. By definition the Great Ideas are radical. As such they are sometimes misread, or distorted by popular simplifications. Understanding a Great Idea demands personal engagement. Our selection of Great Ideas is drawn from literature and philosophy, science, art, music, theatre, and cinema. We also include biographies of pivotal historical and religious figures, as well as contributions from women and other historically under-represented minorities. The result is an integrated multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary database built upon the framework of the always controversial Great Books Core List published in 1940 by the late Great Books Pioneer Mortimer Adler (1902-2001). Most of the works on that list are available in the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World.