April 12, 2026
Physicists bring popcorn
Who was "Not Even Wrong" first? [2023]
Pauli’s legendary burn: internet hunts the true target
TLDR: Historians and fans are debating who first got Pauli’s “not even wrong” put‑down—was it a seminar speaker in the late 1940s or a 1957 paper like Everett’s many‑worlds? The crowd is split between sleuthing timelines and mocking the gatekeeping vibe, with memes turning the mystery into internet sport.
A decades-old physics zinger just turned into a full-on whodunnit. The community is obsessed with who exactly got Wolfgang Pauli’s infamous “not even wrong” verdict, with armchair sleuths combing Wikipedia, letters, and memoirs like it’s a true-crime podcast. One camp cites Rudolf Peierls’ account: Pauli said it about a young theorist’s paper shown to him by a colleague—possibly Sam Goudsmit. Another points to Jan Minkowski’s memoir about a 1946–48 ETH seminar where Pauli allegedly dropped the line after a visiting lecture. And then there’s the spicy theory that the paper was Hugh Everett’s 1957 “many worlds” idea—paired with the fact Pauli died in 1958, the timing fits… kinda.
That was enough to split the comments into warring factions. Team Everett insists the timeline and Pauli’s editorial buddy make it plausible; Team Seminar says classroom lore travels faster than journal gossip; Team “Telephone Game” argues everyone misremembered everything and the legend mutated. The vibe? Equal parts detective board and roast battle. Some users cheer Pauli’s savage precision; others call it a relic of toxic gatekeeping. Linguistics nerds chime in that the German phrase can sound sad, not snarky—cue debates over whether Pauli’s “burn” was actually a sigh.
Meanwhile, memes everywhere: “My code review: not even wrong.” “My thesis outline: not even wrong.” One joker declared the entire comment section “not even sourced.” The only consensus: the mystery is delicious, the drama is eternal, and the internet will never stop trying to attach the sickest one-liner in physics to a proper name.
Key Points
- •Rudolf Peierls reported that Pauli’s “not even wrong” remark referred to a young theorist’s paper shown to him by a colleague, not to a seminar talk.
- •Peierls’s 1992 letter to Physics Today reiterated this context and suggested the colleague may have been Sam Goudsmit.
- •A translated Peierls talk (via Mikhail Shifman) presents the same narrative of Pauli reacting to a paper with the remark.
- •The author considers the hypothesis that the paper could have been Hugh Everett’s 1957 “Relative State” paper, given the timing and Goudsmit’s editorial role at Physical Review.
- •Jan Michael Minkowski’s memoir and a Konrad Bleuler interview indicate the phrase was also used in ETH seminars in 1946–48, possibly addressing a visiting lecturer such as Ernst Stueckelberg.