Anecdote
The laboratory superstition
Coincidence · Named in Pauli’s lifetime · Laboratories that told the story
the effect
Notice how a pattern acquires a name.
Physicists told one another that things broke when Pauli arrived. Otto Stern is said to have kept him from an experiment. The stories are fond and cruel at once. They are not a paper in Physical Review.
Sourced
See the ETH Pauli archive for the man and the letters. Do not confuse an exhibition anecdote with a mechanism.
A pattern that lives as a joke is still a pattern of attention.
Concordance
- The thing
- The joking claim that apparatus failed in Wolfgang Pauli’s vicinity.
- Seen
- Stories of smashed equipment, a banned Pauli, laughter as hygiene.
- Sourced
- Anecdotes in Pauli biographies and ETH memory. No physical ‘Pauli effect’ is established.
- Miss
- The unbroken afternoons.
- One question remains
- What does a community protect when it names a jinx?
