for a thesis on the hydrogen moleculeion.
When Pauli was a graduate student, the field of physics was in a state of disarray, stumbling towards new perspectives on the nature of matter and energy. The development of quantum mechanics and relativity theory was still encumbered by remnants of classical theory. Pauli made important contributions to the clarification of the nature of modern theory, especially with his enunciation of the exclusion principle. In addition, Pauli tackled a then-troublesome problem in which the emission of electrons during beta decay (a form of radiation) does not appear to obey the law of conservation of energy. To resolve this difficulty, Pauli hypothesized the existence of a chargeless, massless particle later given the name neutrino .
After receiving his degree, Pauli was offered a job as assistant in theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen. There he came into contact not only with English physicist Max Born, professor of theoretical physics, but also with Danish physicist Niels Bohr , who was guest lecturer at Göttingen in 1922. It was through Bohr's lectures that Pauli began to think about some of the fundamental difficulties that still remained in Bohr's quantum theory of the atom.
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