Remembering Rabi: A challenge and a ghost story

I enjoyed reading I. I. Rabi’s “Stories from the Early Days of Quantum Mechanics.” Graduate students particularly need to read stories like these to help them over the bumps they invariably encounter in their careers. With respect to the “Pauli effect,” I have a more recent story suggesting that the effect persisted even after his death! At a 1961 meeting of the American Physical Society at the New Yorker Hotel in New York City, Richard Feynman gave a talk to a packed conference hall on the quantization of the gravitational field. He started out in typical Feynman fashion by saying, or actually shouting, “Pretend Einstein never existed!” At this point, those of us in the hall heard a noise coming from the ceiling: A loudspeaker had come loose, dangled for a moment from attached wires, and then finally plunged to the floor. No one was injured, and amidst laughter after the shock wore off, Feynman continued. Victor Weisskopf, who had also been a student of Pauli’s, was heard to remark, “That was Pauli’s poltergeist.” Feynman later elaborated on his talk to a huge audience at Columbia University, but as far as I know, no further Pauli poltergeist activity was reported.