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Wolfgang Pauli

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:12,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
Wolfgang Pauli

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Auction Date:2018 Jun 13 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS signed “W. Pauli,” two onionskin pages, 8.25 x 11.75, November 17, 1949. Letter to the eminent American physicist Joaquin M. Luttinger, in part (translated): "Jost told me about your letter on food questions and radical solutions and mass production in quantum electrodynamics. Only dealing with your spiritual starvation I have to put you a question today, as I want to hear the official answer of the ‘Dysonists’ [likely a reference to Freeman Dyson]: There is a difference of a factor Q in the definition of the vacuum-polarization between a) Pauli-Villars…and b) Feynmann or Jost-Luttinger (all in the e2-approximation). [There follow formulas for a) and b) plus an additional explanation]. Neither raised this question here in a discussion (shame on you and Jost, that you did not mention it to me earlier!) This is not due to any computational error, but it is a question of the interpretation of non-observable results…Therefore I think it of some interest. The result b) is always obtained if the S-matrix of real scattering process is computed (in contrast to additional currents). I hope to be received by you with enlightening remarks about it. (It is also interesting in this connection that Shafroth does not obtain any charge-renormalization in the Compton-effect). The problem to prove [formula] is still open. In my last letter to you and Jost (I am looking forward with great hopes to the continuation of your ‘symbiosis’) I was too quick in the discussion of the subtraction of the vacuum contribution in the e2-approximation one obtains for God knows now…[formulas]…Schafroth proved (with help of formulas contained in his doctor-thesis) that the numerators are equal, so that one can immediately…the result is negative. But it was not possible for us to guess the correct generalization of this to higher approximations in [Greek symbol]. Jost wants to resume this problem when he arrives in December. I leave on Tuesday and will arrive according to schedule on November 29th in New York with Mrs. Pauli. It was great fun to telephone with Oppe [J. Robert Oppenheimer?]. His voice sounded as if he had lost a couple of bets. (As the Washington administration made me miss the boat on Nov. 10th)." Pauli's letter is followed by a letter in German in an unknown hand, signed "Roby." In fine condition, with light creasing, and a short tear to blank top edge of the first page.

An important letter between colleagues—Pauli had received the Nobel Prize four years earlier for his discovery of the exclusion principle, and Luttinger had made his noteworthy calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron in 1948. As part of the excellent scientific content, this letter references Pauli–Villars regularization, and the work of fellow Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. A marvelous piece of physics history.