Wolfgang Pauli may have been a great theoretical physicist but he was a walking accident zone in the laboratory. His mere presence in a laboratory, it was said, would cause havoc: the power would fail, instruments would break or malfunction. One day, some important experimental equipment in Professor James Frank’s laboratory at the University of Gottingen unexpectedly blew up for no apparent reason. And Pauli, who was on his way to Denmark, had not even entered the building! Only later was it discovered that the catastrophe had taken place at the precise moment that the train carrying Pauli from Zurich to Copenhagen had stopped at the Gottingen railroad station.
