Wolfgang Pauli

Pauli formulated the exclusion principle in 1925, showing that no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, which explains the structure of the periodic table and the very stability of matter; he received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics for it. Working in Hamburg, Zurich and later at Princeton, he was one of the founders of quantum mechanics and also predicted the existence of the neutrino. His paternal grandparents belonged to a prominent Prague Jewish family, and his father converted from Judaism to Catholicism shortly before Wolfgang's birth.