Wolfgang Pauli did not like solid-state physics and some of the other straightforward applications of quantum mechanics. And I do not think he really believed in Einstein's approach to unified field theories.
One evening we walked home together after having been drinking wine at the home of one of Pauli's colleagues. "We are living in a curious time," Pauli said, "in a cultureless time. Christianity has lost its grip. There must come something else. I think I know what is coming.
I know it exactly. But I don't tell it to others. They may think I am mad. So I am rather doing five-dimensional theory of relativity although I don't really believe in it. But I know what is coming. Perhaps I will tell you some other time."
He never did... [Told by Hendrik Casimir]
Pauli at the blackboard in Copenhagen, 1929 - intense as ever, chalk flying.
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