Two Men of Utmost Importance: Pauli and Gustafson

Abstract

In this chapter we wish to introduce two men who played a crucial role in shaping up Källén’s academic career. They were:

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) who hardly needs any introduction. There is a great deal of information about him on the internet, the reason only partially being that he is a Nobel Laureate – he was in addition a very colorful character. Though this book is not about him, our readers will find him all over in it. He was the prime scientific supporter of the young Gunnar Källén. Moreover, for this book the Källén-Pauli correspondence has been an invaluable source of information about the young Källén. The reason is that, in spite of trying hard, we have not been able to locate Källén’s early correspondence.

A year after becoming a professor in Lund, Källén got a personal secretary, Ms Margareta Bergsten who would systematically file his correspondence. Fortunately, there are also a few letters from 1958 in the files but none from earlier date than that. The disruption caused by his sudden death, followed shortly after by that of his wife, could have been the reason for this unfortunate situation. The only exception is his correspondence with Pauli, which goes back all the way to 1949, when Källén was a second year graduate student, and thus gives us a glimpse of him as a young researcher. Here below, we briefly present Pauli, concentrating on aspects having to do with Källén.