Paul Russian Pavel Petrovich (b. Oct. 1, 1754, St. Petersburg, Russia—d. March 23, 1801, St. Petersburg) Tsar of Russia (1796-1801). He was the son of Peter III and Catherine II, whom he succeeded as emperor in 1796. He reversed many of Catherine’s policies, strengthened the autocracy, and established the law of succession within the male line of the Romanov dynasty. He provoked the hostility of the nobles and the army with his tyrannical rule and capricious foreign policy, which drew Russia into war with France. In a plot by the nobles to depose him and place his son Alexander (later Alexander I) on the throne, Paul was assassinated.
Paul III orig. Alessandro Farnese (b. Feb. 29, 1468, Canino, Papal States—d. Nov. 10, 1549, Rome) Pope (1534-49). The son of a noble Tuscan family, he was made a cardinal-deacon in 1493 and served as bishop in Parma and Ostia before being named dean of the College of Cardinals by Pope Leo X. Ordained a priest in 1519, he was unanimously elected pope in 1534. Though loose in morals in earlier years (he had three sons and a daughter), he became an efficient promoter of reform, convening the Council of Trent in 1545 and initiating the Counter- Reformation. He also supported the newly founded Jesuits and was a patron of the arts, the last in the tradition of the Renaissance popes.
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Paul VI ► pavement I 1459
Paul VI orig. Giovanni Battista Montini (b. Sept. 26, 1897, Con- cesio, near Brescia, Italy—d. Aug. 6, 1978, Castel Gandolfo) Pope (1963— 78). Educated at Brescia and ordained in 1920, he continued his studies in Rome, earning degrees in civil and canon law. He was a church dip¬ lomat for much of his career, until he was named archbishop of Milan in 1954. He became a cardinal in 1958, and in 1963 he was elected pope. Paul VI presided over the final sessions of the Second Vatican Council and appointed commissions to carry out its reforms, including revisions in the mass. He also relaxed rules on fasting, removed a number of ques¬ tionable saints from the church’s calendar, and enforced conservative positions on birth control and clerical celibacy. He promoted ecumenism and was the first pope to travel widely, visiting Israel, India, Asia, and Latin America.
Paul, Les orig. Lester Polfus (b. June 9, 1915, Waukesha, Wis., U.S.) U.S. guitarist and inventor. He played many styles of popular music, ini¬ tially country but later jazz, and in the 1940s he was a sideman for Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. He invented the first solid-body electric gui¬ tar and was instrumental in developing modern multitrack recording. His overdubbed, sped-up recordings from the late 1940s and early 1950s— including “Brazil” (1948), “Nola” (1950), and “How High the Moon” (1951), often with his wife, Mary Ford (1924-77) singing multiple har¬ mony parts—demonstrated the potential of tape. He continued to perform occasionally into his 80s.
Paul, Lewis (d. April 1759, Kensington, Middlesex, Eng.) British inventor. Working with John Wyatt from about 1730, he developed the first power spinning machine (see drawing frame), which they patented in 1738. It operated by drawing cotton or wool through pairs of successively faster rollers. It was eventually replaced by Richard Arkwright’s water frame. Paul also patented a carding machine in 1748.
Paul, Saint orig. Saul (b. ad 10?, Tarsus in Cilicia—d. 67?, Rome) Early Christian missionary and theologian, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. Born a Jew in Tarsus, Asia Minor, he was trained as a rabbi but earned his living as a tentmaker. A zealous Pharisee, he persecuted the first Christians until a vision of Jesus, experienced while on the road to Dam¬ ascus, converted him to Christianity. Three years later he met St. Peter and Jesus’ brother James and was henceforth recognized as the 13th Apostle. From his base in Antioch, he traveled widely, preaching to the Gentiles. By asserting that non-Jewish disciples of Christ did not have to observe Jewish law, he helped to establish Christianity as a separate reli¬ gion rather than a Jewish sect. On a journey to Jerusalem, he aroused such hostility among the Jews that a mob gathered, and he was arrested and imprisoned for two years. The circumstances of his death are unknown. Paul’s ministry and religious views are known largely from his letters, or epistles, collected in the New Testament, which are the first Christian theo¬ logical writing and the source of much Christian doctrine. It was due to Paul more than anyone else that Christianity became a world religion.
Pauli, Wolfgang (b. April 25, 1900, Vienna, Austria—d. Dec. 15, 1958, Zurich, Switz.) Austrian-born U.S. physicist. At the age of 20, he wrote a 200-page encyclopaedia article on the theory of relativity. He taught physics in Zurich (1928-40) and later at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. In 1924 he proposed that a spin quantum num¬ ber, +Vi or -Vi, is necessary to specify electron energy states. In 1930 he proposed that the energy and momentum apparently lost when an elec¬ tron is emitted from an atomic nucleus in beta decay is carried away by an almost massless, uncharged, and difficult-to-detect particle (the neu¬ trino). He was awarded a 1945 Nobel Prize for his 1925 discovery of the Pauli exclusion principle.
Pauli exclusion principle Assertion proposed by Wolfgang Pauli that no two electrons in an atom can be in the same state or configuration at the same time. It accounts for the observed patterns of light emission from atoms. The principle has since been generalized to include the whole class of particles called fermions. The spin of such particles is always an odd whole-number multiple of Vi. For example, electrons have spin Vi, and can occupy two distinct states with opposite spin directions. The Pauli exclusion principle indicates, therefore, that only two electrons are allowed in each atomic energy state, leading to the successive buildup of orbitals around the nucleus. This prevents matter from collapsing to an extremely dense state.
Pauling, Linus (Carl) (b. Feb. 28, 1901, Portland, Ore., U.S.—d. Aug. 19, 1994, Big Sur, Calif.) U.S. chemist. He received his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology and became a professor there in
He was one of the first researchers to apply quantum mechanics to the study of molecular structures; to calculate interatomic distances and the angles between chemical bonds (see bonding), he effectively used X-ray diffraction, electron diffraction, magnetic effects, and the heat of reaction. His book The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals (1939) became one of the century’s most influential chem¬ istry texts. He was the first recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Langmuir Prize (1931) and later the first recipient of its Lewis medal (1951), and in 1954 he received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In 1962 his efforts on behalf of control of nuclear weapons and against nuclear testing brought him the Nobel Peace Prize, making him the first recipient of two unshared Nobel Prizes. In later years he devoted himself to the study of the prevention and treatment of illness by taking high doses of vitamins and minerals, particularly vitamin C.
Paulus \'pau-l3s\, Friedrich (b. Sept. 23, 1890, Breitenau, Ger.—d. Feb. 1, 1957, Dresden, E.Ger.) German general in World War II. He became deputy chief of the German General Staff in World War II and commanded the German 6th Army in the Soviet Union. He was defeated in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, and the surrender of his army of 300,000 men ended Germany’s offensive in Russia. While a prisoner, Paulus agitated against Adolf Hitler among the other German prisoners of war and later testified at the NOrnberg trials. After his release from prison (1953), he settled in East Germany.