Introduction to "Standing together in Troubled Times"

TL;DR

This paper introduces a book that narrates the story of friendship and scientific collaboration between Wolfgang Pauli and Charlotte Houtermans, highlighting their personal and professional connections during the early quantum era and WWII.

Contribution

It presents newly discovered historical documents, including letters and diaries, shedding light on the personal relationships and scientific community of early 20th-century physicists.

Findings

First publication of Pauli's letters to Houtermans.

Reveals personal networks among prominent physicists.

Provides new insights into physicists' lives during WWII.

Abstract

This Introduction opens the book {\sl Standing Together in Troubled Times} which presents a story of friendship between Wolfgang Pauli, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century, and Charlotte Houtermans. They met at the very onset of the quantum era, in the late 1920s in Germany where Charlotte was a physics student at G\"ottingen University. At that time G\"ottingen was right at the heart of groundbreaking developments in physics. Both Pauli and Houtermans personally knew major participants in the quantum revolution. Caught between two evils -- German National Socialism and Soviet Communism -- Charlotte Houtermans would have likely perished if it were not for the brotherhood of physicists: Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Max Born, Robert Oppenheimer and many other noted scientists who tried to save friends and colleagues (either leftist sympathizers or Jews) who were in mortal danger of becoming entrapped in a simmering pre-WWII Europe. This book is based on newly discovered documents from the Houtermans family archive, including Pauli's numerous letters to Houtermans, her correspondence with other great physicists, her diaries, and interviews with her children. Almost all documents presented in this book are being published for the first time.