Wolfgang Paul (right, with glasses) in characteristic form outside the Council Chamber at CERN during a Scientific Policy Committee meeting in 1977. He was chair of the committee at the time (1975–1978) and a delegate to Council. (CERN)

Wolfgang Paul Was A Great Physicist, Not A Typo Of ‘Wolfgang Pauli’

The world of particle physics sure does have surprises, even for the most educated of physicists out there.

If you ever take a visit to the physical site of CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider is located, you’ll immediately notice something wonderful about the streets. They’re all named after influential, important figures in the history of physics. Titans such as Max Planck, Marie Curie, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Paul Dirac, Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein have all been honored, along with many others.

One of the more interesting surprises you might find, if you look hard enough, is a street honoring the physicist Wolfgang Paul. You might immediately think, “oh, someone vandalized the street of Wolfgang Pauli,” the famous physicist whose exclusion principle describes the behavior of all the normal matter in our Universe. But no; Pauli has his own street, and Wolfgang Paul is entirely his own Nobel-winning physicist. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.

The 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly awarded to Norman Ramsey, Hans Dehmelt, and Wolfgang Paul for their work in the development of atomic precision spectroscopy. Wolfgang Paul’s development of the ion trap was instrumental in this, and the Paul trap, among many other of his achievements, is still in widespread use today. (NOBEL MEDIA)

Wolfgang Paul, not to bury the lede, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics back in…