ERWIN SCHRöDINGER
Erwin Schrödinger was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, the only child of
Rudolf Schrödinger, who was married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his
Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. Erwin's father came
from a Bavarian family which generations before had settled in Vienna. He was a
highly gifted man with a broad education. After having finished his chemistry
studies, he devoted himself for years to Italian painting. After this he took up
botany, which resulted in a series of papers on plant phylogeny.
Schrödinger's wide interests dated from his school years at the Gymnasium, where
he not only had a liking for the scientific disciplines, but also appreciated
the severe logic of ancient grammar and the beauty of German poetry. (What he
abhorred was memorizing of data and learning from books.)
From 1906 to 1910 he was a student at the University of Vienna, during which
time he came under the strong influence of Fritz Hasenöhrl, who was Boltzmann's
successor. It was in these years that Schrödinger acquired a mastery of
eigenvalue problems in the physics of continuous media, thus laying the
foundation for his future great work. Hereafter, as assistant to Franz Exner, he,
together with his friend K. W. F. Kohlrausch, conducted practical work for
students (without himself, as he said, learning what experimenting was). During
the First World War he served as an artillery officer.
In 1920 he took up an academic position as assistant to Max Wien, followed by
positions at Stuttgart (extraordinary professor), Breslau (ordinary professor),
and at the University of Zurich (replacing von Laue) where he settled for six
years. In later years Schrödinger looked back to his Zurich period with great
pleasure - it was here that he enjoyed so much the contact and friendship of
many of his colleagues, among whom were Hermann Weyl and Peter Debye. It was
also his most fruitful period, being actively engaged in a variety of subjects
of theoretical physics. His papers at that time dealt with specific heats of
solids, with problems of thermodynamics (he was greatly interested in Boltzmann's
probability theory) and of atomic spectra; in addition, he indulged in
physiological studies of colour (as a result of his contacts with Kohlrausch and
Exner, and of Helmholtz's lectures). His great discovery, Schrödinger's wave
equation, was made at the end of this epoch-during the first half of 1926.
It came as a result of his dissatisfaction with the quantum condition in Bohr's
orbit theory and his belief that atomic spectra should really be determined by
some kind of eigenvalue problem. For this work he shared with Dirac the Nobel
Prize for 1933.
In 1927 Schrödinger moved to Berlin as Planck's successor. Germany's capital was
then a centre of great scientific activity and he enthusiastically took part in
the weekly colloquies among colleagues, many of whom "exceeding him in age and
reputation". With Hitler's coming to power (1933), however, Schrödinger decided
he could not continue in Germany. He came to England and for a while held a
fellowship at Oxford. In 1934 he was invited to lecture at Princeton University
and was offered a permanent position there, but did not accept. In 1936 he was
offered a position at University of Graz, which he accepted only after much
deliberation and because his longing for his native country outweighed his
caution. With the annexation of Austria in 1938, he was immediately in
difficulty because his leaving Germany in 1933 was taken to be an unfriendly act.
Soon afterwards he managed to escape to Italy, from where he proceeded to Oxford
and then to University of Ghent. After a short stay he moved to the newly
created Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, where he became Director of
the School for Theoretical Physics. He remained in Dublin until his retirement
in 1955.
All this time Schrödinger continued his research and published many papers on a
variety of topics, including the problem of unifying gravitation and
electromagnetism, which also absorbed Einstein and which is still unsolved; (he
was also the author of the well-known little book "What is Life?", 1944). He
remained greatly interested in the foundations of atomic physics. Schrödinger
disliked the generally accepted dual description in terms of waves and particles,
with a statistical interpretation for the waves, and tried to set up a theory in
terms of waves only. This led him into controversy with other leading physicists.
After his retirement he returned to an honoured position in Vienna. He died on
the 4th of January, 1961, after a long illness, survived by his faithful
companion, Annemarie Bertel, whom he married in 1920.
Erwin Schrödinger was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, the only child of
Rudolf Schrödinger, who was married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his
Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. Erwin's father came
from a Bavarian family which generations before had settled in Vienna. He was a
highly gifted man with a broad education. After having finished his chemistry
studies, he devoted himself for years to Italian painting. After this he took up
botany, which resulted in a series of papers on plant phylogeny.
Schrödinger's wide interests dated from his school years at the Gymnasium, where
he not only had a liking for the scientific disciplines, but also appreciated
the severe logic of ancient grammar and the beauty of German poetry. (What he
abhorred was memorizing of data and learning from books.)
From 1906 to 1910 he was a student at the University of Vienna, during which
time he came under the strong influence of Fritz Hasenöhrl, who was Boltzmann's
successor. It was in these years that Schrödinger acquired a mastery of
eigenvalue problems in the physics of continuous media, thus laying the
foundation for his future great work. Hereafter, as assistant to Franz Exner, he,
together with his friend K. W. F. Kohlrausch, conducted practical work for
students (without himself, as he said, learning what experimenting was). During
the First World War he served as an artillery officer.
In 1920 he took up an academic position as assistant to Max Wien, followed by
positions at Stuttgart (extraordinary professor), Breslau (ordinary professor),
and at the University of Zurich (replacing von Laue) where he settled for six
years. In later years Schrödinger looked back to his Zurich period with great
pleasure - it was here that he enjoyed so much the contact and friendship of
many of his colleagues, among whom were Hermann Weyl and Peter Debye. It was
also his most fruitful period, being actively engaged in a variety of subjects
of theoretical physics. His papers at that time dealt with specific heats of
solids, with problems of thermodynamics (he was greatly interested in Boltzmann's
probability theory) and of atomic spectra; in addition, he indulged in
physiological studies of colour (as a result of his contacts with Kohlrausch and
Exner, and of Helmholtz's lectures). His great discovery, Schrödinger's wave
equation, was made at the end of this epoch-during the first half of 1926.
It came as a result of his dissatisfaction with the quantum condition in Bohr's
orbit theory and his belief that atomic spectra should really be determined by
some kind of eigenvalue problem. For this work he shared with Dirac the Nobel
Prize for 1933.
In 1927 Schrödinger moved to Berlin as Planck's successor. Germany's capital was
then a centre of great scientific activity and he enthusiastically took part in
the weekly colloquies among colleagues, many of whom "exceeding him in age and
reputation". With Hitler's coming to power (1933), however, Schrödinger decided
he could not continue in Germany. He came to England and for a while held a
fellowship at Oxford. In 1934 he was invited to lecture at Princeton University
and was offered a permanent position there, but did not accept. In 1936 he was
offered a position at University of Graz, which he accepted only after much
deliberation and because his longing for his native country outweighed his
caution. With the annexation of Austria in 1938, he was immediately in
difficulty because his leaving Germany in 1933 was taken to be an unfriendly act.
Soon afterwards he managed to escape to Italy, from where he proceeded to Oxford
and then to University of Ghent. After a short stay he moved to the newly
created Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin, where he became Director of
the School for Theoretical Physics. He remained in Dublin until his retirement
in 1955.
All this time Schrödinger continued his research and published many papers on a
variety of topics, including the problem of unifying gravitation and
electromagnetism, which also absorbed Einstein and which is still unsolved; (he
was also the author of the well-known little book "What is Life?", 1944). He
remained greatly interested in the foundations of atomic physics. Schrödinger
disliked the generally accepted dual description in terms of waves and particles,
with a statistical interpretation for the waves, and tried to set up a theory in
terms of waves only. This led him into controversy with other leading physicists.
After his retirement he returned to an honoured position in Vienna. He died on
the 4th of January, 1961, after a long illness, survived by his faithful
companion, Annemarie Bertel, whom he married in 1920.