Erwin Schrödinger Biography

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World of Scientific Discovery on Erwin Schrödinger

Schrödinger was born in Vienna on August 12, 1887. He received his earliest education at home and then at the local gymnasium. He entered the University of Vienna and earned his Ph.D. there in 1910. During World War I, he served in the army as an artillery officer. After the war, he served on the faculties at the universities of Stüttgart, Zurich, and Berlin. He succeeded Max Planck at Berlin in 1927.

In 1933, Hitler's rise to power prompted Schrödinger to leave his homeland. He accepted an appointment as guest professor at Magdalene College, Oxford. After three years at Magdalene, he was offered a position as professor of physics at the University of Graz. The Austrian nation was in turmoil because of Nazi activities, but Schrödinger was homesick and decided to return to his native land.

The German annexation of Austria in 1938 convinced Schrödinger to flee again however. He escaped to the United States, this time by way of Italy. After a short stay at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, he accepted an appointment as director of the newly established School of Theoretical Physics in the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin. Schrödinger remained in Dublin until his retirement in 1956. He then returned to the University of Vienna. During his time there, he also represented Austria on the International Atomic Energy Agency. He died in Vienna on January 4, 1961 after a prolonged illness.

In 1933, the same year that he first left Austria, Schrödinger was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for his work on atomic theory. That work had been inspired by two factors. The first was his general dissatisfaction with the Bohr's atomic model. Although Bohr's theory of the atom had been very successful in explaining the observed spectral lines of hydrogen, it had been created simply by inventing a series of quantum rules for which there was no theoretical basis.

The second factor was his reading of Louis Victor de Broglie 's papers on matter waves. Schrödinger was curious to know how de Broglie's ideas (originally devised for freely moving electrons ) might be applied to bound electrons, such as those found in an atom. Specifically, he wanted to find out how de Broglie's ideas could be applied to improve the Bohr model of the atom. Unfortunately, bound electrons present much more difficult problems because of the electrical forces they experience from the nucleus and from other electrons.

Schrödinger was successful in developing an equation, however, that described the existence of standing electron waves in an atom. A standing wave is one that consists of an exact number of wavelengths. According to the Schrödinger model, a standing electron wave is stable, and electrons that travel in such a wave do not emit energy. In contrast, an electron traveling in a wave consisting of a fractional number of wavelengths is in an unstable condition.

The orbital positions predicted by the Schrödinger wave equation turned out to be almost exactly the same as those predicted by Bohr. Thus, the Bohr model was finally provided with a firm theoretical basis. The Bohr orbits are those regions of an atom in which standing electron waves can exist.

The Schrödinger theory was a great success not only because of its specific solution to the Bohr problem, but also because it introduced a new approach to dealing with atomic theory. That approach soon became known as wave mechanics or quantum mechanics. Some years later, John von Neumann demonstrated that Schrödinger's wave mechanics is mathematically equivalent to the matrix mechanics developed by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Jordan.

Still, problems remained. For example, when Schrödinger introduced (correctly) relativistic corrections in his wave equation, he obtained results that did not conform to experimental observations; however, without those relativistic factors, the equation did make correct predictions. It was not until the discovery of electron spin by Samuel Goudsmit and George Uhlenback that this discrepancy was explained.

Also, it was not immediately clear how to explain the dependent variable, , in the equation. The equation had been developed as the result of a mathematical exercise based on the wave properties of the electron. The variable, , appeared as a consequence of that analysis, but there was no obviously physical interpretation for the function.

Schrödinger thought that might represent the actual physical location of the electron in the atom. This interpretation proved to be incorrect, however. Eventually, the function was given a probabilistic interpretation that described the likelihood of finding an electron in various regions of an atom. Schrödinger, like Albert Einstein, was never comfortable with this explanation, but it has become the standard method of interpreting the wave equation.

Although Schrödinger is best known for his wave equation, he made contributions in a number of other areas including the specific heat of solids, thermodynamics, color theory, and radioactivity. One of his most influential works was a popular book called What Is Life", published in 1944. The book suggested that the gene, the basic unit of heredity, might be a very specific type of solid with a chemical structure that carries the genetic message. His book influenced the thinking of a whole generation of biologists who began to realize that biological phenomena might be understood in terms of chemical and physical principles. Included among the many biologists influenced by Schrödinger's research were James Watson and Francis Crick, who eventually found the chemical structure of DNA, the genetic material.