![]() ![]() ![]() Goudsmit at the time was editor-in-chief at Physical Review, so would have been interested in Pauli’s opinion of the paper.Ĭomplicating this story, John Minkowki sent me some pages from his father’s 1991 book Through three wars: The memoirs of Jan Michael Minkowski, which included this (in a context describing his 1946-48 student days at ETH): The timing (“Quite recently”) would have been right, with the paper published in July 1957, Pauli’s death later in December 1958. Trying to guess what the article in question might have been, I’m tempted by the hypothesis that the discussion with Goudsmit was about Everett’s “Relative State” Formulation of Quantum Mechanics paper. Pauli read the paper and said, with sadness: “It is not even wrong.” Somebody showed to Pauli a work of a young theorist being well aware that the work was not too good but still willing to hear Pauli’s opinion. Google also turned up a translation of a talk by Peierls in this article by Mikhail Shifman, which includes: Wolfgang Pauli’s remark “Das is nicht einmal falsch” (“That is not even wrong”) was made not as a comment on a seminar talk but as a reaction to a paper by a young theoretician, on which a colleague (I believe it was Sam Goudsmit) had invited Pauli’s opinion. Looking around for any more information about this, Wikipedia links to a 1992 letter to the editor at Physics Today from Peierls, which states Pauli remarked sadly ‘It is not even wrong.’ Quite recently, a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli’s views. I referred to this early blog post, which explains that Karl von Meyenn (editor of Pauli’s correspondence) had pointed me to a biographical memoir about Pauli by Rudolf Peierls which includes: He asked if I knew what the specific context of Pauli’s “Not Even Wrong” comment was, and I told him I didn’t. ![]() I recently heard from John Minkowski, whose father Jan Minkowksi was a student of Pauli’s in the late 1940s. ![]()
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