Erwin Schrödinger
1887-1961
Austrian Physicist
Best known for his wave equation and a thought experiment involving an imaginary cat, Erwin Schrödinger contributed to a variety of disciplines from biology to philosophy. Like so many of his generation, his life and career were shaped heavily by two world wars and the political divisions of Europe.
Born and raised in Vienna, Austria, Schrödinger was the son of a frustrated scientist who was determined that his son would have every possible opportunity. Until the age of 11 Erwin had a private tutor, then he entered the Akademisches Gymnasium (approximately a high school) gaining a broad education, excelling at chemistry and mathematics, but also enjoying poetry, drama, and grammar, and becoming fluent in German, English, French, and Spanish. He concentrated first on chemistry, then on Italian painting, and published several papers in botany.
In 1906 he entered the University of Vienna, where he excelled in theoretical and experimental physics. Upon graduating Schrödingerdid a year of military service. He then continued research in physics until the outbreak of World War I, in which he served as an artillery officer on the Italian Front.
During the war Schrödinger's favorite teacher, Fritz Hasenöhrl (1874-1916) died. Schrödinger decided to teach at Hasenöhrl's old school in Czernowitz to honor his memory. However, the city of Czernowitz (later Chernovtsy) was taken from Austria as war reparations by Russia, making this impossible. Looking back, Schrödinger wrote, "I had to stick to theoretical physics, and, to my astonishment, something occasionally emerged from it."
In 1920 he married and received a good research position in Germany. He did important work on color theory and on the statistical thermodynamics of ideal gases. However, he was unhappy in his marriage, and his research dried up. In 1925 he wrote a very introspective account of his philosophy of life.
1926 was a turning point for Schrödinger. He was inspired by Louis de Broglie (1892-1987), whose work suggested that waves and particles could be considered interchangeable (wave-particle duality). An affair with a young woman, the first of several, provided another inspiration. Secluded in a holiday villa with his new companion, he would place pearls in his ears to block out noise and work for hours uninterrupted. The six major papers that came from this year had far-reaching implications for both physics and chemistry.
Schrödinger proposed a wave interpretation of the distribution of electrons in an atom. His wave equation was entirely theoretically based, yet gave results that agreed with experimental observations. Schrödinger felt his wave mechanics offered a more appealing approach to quantum physics, providing a way of visualizing the atom, rather than the abstract statistics of other methods.
In 1933 he received the Nobel Prize in physics, shared with Paul Dirac (1902-1984). That same year the Nazi party came to power in Germany, and Schrödinger left for Oxford, England. He was lured back to Austria, but in 1938 it was annexed by Nazi Germany, and he was forced to flee, ending up in Dublin, Ireland, where he stayed until 1955.
Never entirely happy in the direction quantum physics developed, Schrödinger often found himself at odds with other scientists. He offered many criticisms of quantum interpretations, themost famous being a thought experiment known as Schrödinger's Cat, in which a quantum event produces strange results in the observable world.
Erwin Schrödinger. (Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)He published numerous works in physics, but also a short volume of poetry, and an influential book on biology, What is Life (1944). Schrödinger wrote about his career, "In my scientific work (and moreover also in my life) I have never followed one main line, one program defining a direction for a long time."
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