Erwin Schrödinger

File:Erwin Schrodinger at U Vienna.JPG

Bust of Schrödinger, in the courtyard arcade of the main building, University of Vienna, Austria

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (Template:IPAc-en, Template:IPAc-en;<ref>"Schrödinger" Template:Webarchive. Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.</ref> Template:IPA; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as Template:Not a typo or Template:Not a typo, was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for postulating the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. Schrödinger coined the term "quantum entanglement" in 1935.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In addition, he wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, colour theory, electrodynamics, general relativity, and cosmology, and he made several attempts to construct a unified field theory. In his book What Is Life? Schrödinger addressed the problems of genetics, looking at the phenomenon of life from the point of view of physics. He also paid great attention to the philosophical aspects of science, ancient, and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics, and religion.<ref name="frs">Template:Cite journal</ref> He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is best known for his "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.<ref>Walter J. Moore. Schrödinger: Life and Thought. Cambridge, England, UK: Press Syndicate of Cambridge University Press, 1989. p.194.</ref><ref name=mactutorA>Template:MacTutor</ref>

Spending most of his life as an academic with positions at various universities, Schrödinger, along with Paul Dirac, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 for his work on quantum mechanics, the same year he left Germany due to his opposition to Nazism. In his personal life, he lived with both his wife and his mistress which may have led to problems causing him to leave his position at Oxford. Subsequently, until 1938, he had a position in Graz, Austria, until the Nazi takeover when he fled, finally finding a long-term arrangement in Dublin, Ireland, where he remained until retirement in 1955, and where he allegedly sexually abused several minors.

Biography

Early years

Schrödinger was born in Erdberg, Vienna, Austria, on 12 August 1887, to Rudolf Schrödinger (Template:Linktext producer, botanist<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>)<ref name="The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933">Template:Cite book</ref> and Georgine Emilia Brenda Schrödinger (née Bauer) (daughter of Template:Interlanguage link, professor of chemistry, TU Wien).Template:Sfn He was their only child.

His mother was of half Austrian and half English descent; his father was Catholic and his mother was Lutheran. He himself was an atheist.<ref>Template:Harvnb Quote: "In one respect, however, he is not a romantic: he does not idealize the person of the beloved, his highest praise is to consider her his equal. 'When you feel your own equal in the body of a beautiful woman, just as ready to forget the world for you as you for her – oh my good Lord – who can describe what happiness then. You can live it, now and again – you cannot speak of it.' Of course, he does speak of it, and almost always with religious imagery. Yet at this time he also wrote, 'By the way, I never realized that to be nonbelieving, to be an atheist, was a thing to be proud of. It went without saying as it were.' And in another place at about this same time: 'Our creed is indeed a queer creed. You others, Christians (and similar people), consider our ethics much inferior, indeed abominable. There is that little difference. We adhere to ours in practice, you don't.'"</ref> However, he had strong interests in Eastern religions and pantheism, and he used religious symbolism in his works.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He also believed his scientific work was an approach to divinity in an intellectual sense.<ref>Template:Harvnb Quote: "He rejected traditional religious beliefs (Jewish, Christian, and Islamic) not on the basis of any reasoned argument, nor even with an expression of emotional antipathy, for he loved to use religious expressions and metaphors, but simply by saying that they are naive." ... "He claimed to be an atheist, but he always used religious symbolism and believed his scientific work was an approach to the godhead."</ref>

He was also able to learn English outside school, as his maternal grandmother was British.<ref name="hof1">Template:Cite book</ref> Between 1906 and 1910 (the year he earned his doctorate) Schrödinger studied at the University of Vienna under the physicists Franz S. Exner (1849–1926) and Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874–1915). He received his doctorate at Vienna under Hasenöhrl. He also conducted experimental work with Karl Wilhelm Friedrich "Fritz" Kohlrausch. In 1911, Schrödinger became an assistant to Exner.<ref name="The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933" />

Middle years

File:Erwin Schrodinger2.jpg

Erwin Schrödinger as a young man

In 1914 Schrödinger achieved habilitation (venia legendi). Between 1914 and 1918 he participated in war work as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery (Gorizia, Duino, Sistiana, Prosecco, Vienna). In 1920 he became the assistant to Max Wien, in Jena, and in September 1920 he attained the position of ao. Prof. (ausserordentlicher Professor), roughly equivalent to Reader (UK) or associate professor (US), in Stuttgart. In 1921, he became o. Prof. (ordentlicher Professor, i.e. full professor), in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland).<ref name="The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933"/>

In 1921, he moved to the University of Zürich. In 1927, he succeeded Max Planck at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In 1933, Schrödinger decided to leave Germany because he strongly disapproved of the Nazis' antisemitism. He became a Fellow of Magdalen College at the University of Oxford. Soon after he arrived, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Paul Dirac. His position at Oxford did not work out well; his unconventional domestic arrangements, sharing living quarters with two women,Template:Sfn were not met with acceptance. In 1934, Schrödinger lectured at Princeton University; he was offered a permanent position there, but did not accept it. Again, his wish to set up house with his wife and his mistress may have created a problem.<ref>"Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander" Template:Webarchive in Deutsche Biographie</ref> He had the prospect of a position at the University of Edinburgh but visa delays occurred, and in the end he took up a position at the University of Graz in Austria in 1936. He had also accepted the offer of chair position at Department of Physics, Allahabad University in India.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the midst of these tenure issues in 1935, after extensive correspondence with Albert Einstein, he proposed what is now called the "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Later years

In 1938, after the Anschluss, the Nazi takeover of Austria, Schrödinger had problems in Graz because of his flight from Germany in 1933 and his known opposition to Nazism.<ref name="Lakhtakia1996">Template:Cite book</ref> He issued a statement recanting this opposition,<ref name="mactutorB" /> which he later regretted, explaining to Einstein: "I wanted to remain free – and could not do so without great duplicity".<ref name=mactutorB>Template:Cite web</ref> However, this did not fully appease the new dispensation, and the University of Graz dismissed him from his post for "political unreliability". He suffered harassment and was instructed not to leave the country, but fled to Italy with his wife. From there, he went to visiting positions in Oxford and Ghent Universities.<ref name="mactutorB" /><ref name="Lakhtakia1996"/>

File:DIAS 1942 photo.jpg

Schrödinger (front row 2nd from right) and De Valera (front row 4th from left) at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1942

In the same year he received a personal invitation from Ireland's Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera – a mathematician himself – to reside in Ireland, and agreed to help establish an Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He moved to Kincora Road, Clontarf, Dublin, and lived modestly. A plaque has been erected at his Clontarf residence and at the address of his workplace in Merrion Square.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Schrödinger believed that as an Austrian he had a unique relationship to Ireland. In October 1940, a writer from the Irish Press interviewed Schrödinger, who spoke of Celtic heritage of Austrians, saying: "I believe there is a deeper connection between us Austrians and the Celts. Names of places in the Austrian Alps are said to be of Celtic origin."Template:Sfn He became the Director of the School for Theoretical Physics in 1940 and remained there for 17 years. He became a naturalized Irish citizen in 1948, but also retained his Austrian citizenship.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> He published about fifty further papers on various topics, including his explorations of unified field theory.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1943, Schrödinger gave a series of three major lectures at Trinity College Dublin which remain highly influential at the university. The series began annual conferences in his name,Template:Clarify and buildings at the College were named after him.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1944, he wrote What Is Life?, which contains a discussion of negentropy and the concept of a complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms. According to James D. Watson's memoir, DNA, the Secret of Life, Schrödinger's book gave Watson the inspiration to research the gene, which led to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure in 1953. Similarly, Francis Crick, in his autobiographical book What Mad Pursuit, described how he was influenced by Schrödinger's speculations about how genetic information might be stored in molecules.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Schrödinger stayed in Dublin until retiring in 1955.

A manuscript "Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of Galileo"<ref>"Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of Galileo" manuscript</ref> from this time resurfaced at The King's Hospital boarding school, Dublin<ref>Ahlstrom, Dick (18 April 2012) 'Quantum humour' beams back after absence Template:Webarchive. The Irish Times</ref> after it was written for the School's 1955 edition of their Blue Coat to celebrate his leaving Dublin to take up his appointment as Chair of Physics at the University of Vienna.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1956, he returned to Vienna (chair ad personam). At an important lecture during the World Energy Conference he refused to speak on nuclear energy because of his scepticism about it and gave a philosophical lecture instead. During this period, Schrödinger turned from mainstream quantum mechanics' definition of wave–particle duality and promoted the wave idea alone, causing much controversy.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Schrödinger, Are There Quantum Jumps, 1952. http://www.ub.edu/hcub/hfq/sites/default/files/Quantum_Jumps_I.pdf Template:Webarchive</ref>

Tuberculosis and death

File:Grave Schroedinger.jpg

Annemarie and Erwin Schrödinger's gravesite; above the name plate Schrödinger's quantum mechanical wave equation is inscribed on a circular plaque:Template:Equation box 1

Schrödinger suffered from tuberculosis and several times in the 1920s stayed at a sanatorium in Arosa in Switzerland. It was there that he formulated his wave equation.Template:Sfn On 4 January 1961, Schrödinger died of tuberculosis, aged 73, in Vienna.Template:Sfn He left Anny a widow, and was buried in Alpbach, Austria, in a Catholic cemetery. Although he was not Catholic, the priest in charge of the cemetery permitted the burial after learning Schrödinger was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.<ref>Template:Harvnb: "There was some problem about burial in the churchyard since Erwin was not a Catholic, but the priest relented when informed that he was a member in good standing of the Papal Academy, and a plot was made available at the edge of the Friedhof."</ref>

Personal life

On April 6, 1920, Schrödinger married Annemarie (Anny) Bertel.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Harvnb discusses Schrödinger's unconventional relationships, including his affair with Hildegunde March, in chapters seven and eight, "Berlin" and "Exile in Oxford".</ref>

When he migrated to Ireland in 1938, he obtained visas for himself, his wife and also another woman, Hilde March. March was the wife of an Austrian colleague and Schrödinger had fathered a daughter with her in 1934.<ref name="ReferenceA">Ronan Fanning, Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power, Faber & Faber, 2015</ref> Schrödinger wrote to the Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera personally, so as to obtain a visa for March. In October 1939 the ménage à trois duly took up residence in Dublin.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> His wife, Anny (born 3 December 1896), died on 3 October 1965.

One of Schrödinger's grandchildren, Terry Rudolph, has followed in his footsteps as a quantum physicist, and teaches at Imperial College London.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>Template:Sfn

Sexual abuse allegations

At the age of 39, Schrödinger tutored a 14-year-old girl named "Ithi" Junger. Walter Moore relates in his 1989 biography of Schrödinger that the lessons "included 'a fair amount of petting and cuddlingTemplate:'" and Schrödinger "had fallen in love with his pupil".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Moore further relates that "not long after her seventeenth birthday, they became lovers". The relationship continued and in 1932 she became pregnant (then aged 20<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>). "Erwin tried to persuade her to have the child; he said he would take care of it, but he did not offer to divorce [wife] Anny... in desperation, Ithi arranged for an abortion."

Moore describes Schrödinger having a 'Lolita complex'. He quotes from Schrödinger's diary from the time where he said that "men of strong, genuine intellectuality are immensely attracted only by women who, forming the very beginning of the intellectual series, are as nearly connected to the preferred springs of nature as they". A 2021 Irish Times article summarized this as a "predilection for teenage girls", and denounced Schrödinger as "a serial abuser whose behaviour fitted the profile of a paedophile in the widely understood sense of that term".<ref name="Humphreys">Template:Cite news</ref> Schrödinger's grandson and his mother were unhappy with the accusation made by Moore, and once the biography was published, their family broke off contact with him.<ref name="derstandard" />

Carlo Rovelli notes in his book Helgoland that Schrödinger "always kept a number of relationships going at once – and made no secret of his fascination with preadolescent girls". In Ireland, Rovelli writes, he fathered children from two students<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> identified in a Der Standard article as being a 26-year-old and a married political activist of unknown age.<ref name="derstandard">Template:Cite web</ref> Moore's book described both of these episodes, giving the name Kate Nolan as a pseudonym for the first and naming the other as Sheila May, though neither were students.Template:Sfn The book also described an episode of Schrödinger being "infatuated" with a twelve-year-old girl, Barbara MacEntee, while in Ireland. He desisted from attentions after a "serious word" from someone, and later "listed her among the unrequited loves of his life."Template:Sfn This episode from the book was highlighted by the Irish Times article and others.<ref name="derstandard"/>

Walter Moore stated that Schrödinger's attitude towards women was "that of a male supremacist",Template:Sfn but that he disliked the "official misogyny" at Oxford which socially excluded women. Helge Kragh, in his review of Moore's biography, said the "conquest of women, especially very young women, was the salt of life for this sincere romantic and male chauvinist".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The physics department of Trinity College Dublin announced in January 2022 that they would recommend a lecture theatre that had been named for Schrödinger since the 1990s be renamed in light of his history of sexual abuse,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> while a picture of the scientist would be removed, and the renaming of an eponymous lecture series would be considered.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Academic interests and life of the mind

Early in his life, Schrödinger experimented in the fields of electrical engineering, atmospheric electricity, and atmospheric radioactivity, but he usually worked with his former teacher Franz Exner. He also studied vibrational theory, the theory of Brownian motion, and mathematical statistics. In 1912, at the request of the editors of the Handbook of Electricity and Magnetism, Schrödinger wrote an article titled Dielectrism. That same year, Schrödinger gave a theoretical estimate of the probable height distribution of radioactive substances, which is required to explain the observed radioactivity of the atmosphere, and in August 1913 executed several experiments in Zeehame that confirmed his theoretical estimate and those of Victor Franz Hess. For this work, Schrödinger was awarded the 1920 Haitinger Prize (Haitinger-Preis) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.<ref name="Mehra">Template:Cite book</ref> Other experimental studies conducted by the young researcher in 1914 were checking formulas for capillary pressure in gas bubbles and the study of the properties of soft beta radiation produced by gamma rays striking a metal surface. The last work he performed together with his friend Fritz Kohlrausch. In 1919, Schrödinger performed his last physical experiment on coherent light and subsequently focused on theoretical studies.Template:Citation needed

Quantum mechanics

New quantum theory

In the first years of his career, Schrödinger became acquainted with the ideas of the old quantum theory, developed in the works of Einstein, Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, and others. This knowledge helped him work on some problems in theoretical physics, but the Austrian scientist at the time was not yet ready to part with the traditional methods of classical physics.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Schrödinger's first publications about atomic theory and the theory of spectra began to emerge only from the beginning of the 1920s, after his personal acquaintance with Sommerfeld and Wolfgang Pauli and his move to Germany. In January 1921, Schrödinger finished his first article on this subject, about the framework of the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization of the interaction of electrons on some features of the spectra of the alkali metals. Of particular interest to him was the introduction of relativistic considerations in quantum theory. In autumn 1922, he analyzed the electron orbits in an atom from a geometric point of view, using methods developed by his friend Hermann Weyl. This work, in which it was shown that quantum orbits are associated with certain geometric properties, was an important step in predicting some of the features of wave mechanics. Earlier in the same year, he created the Schrödinger equation of the relativistic Doppler effect for spectral lines, based on the hypothesis of light quanta and considerations of energy and momentum. He liked the idea of his teacher Exner on the statistical nature of the conservation laws, so he enthusiastically embraced the BKS theory of Bohr, Hans Kramers, and John C. Slater, which suggested the possibility of violation of these laws in individual atomic processes (for example, in the process of emission of radiation). Although the Bothe–Geiger coincidence experiment soon cast doubt on this, the idea of energy as a statistical concept was a lifelong attraction for Schrödinger, and he discussed it in some reports and publications.<ref name=jammer>Template:Cite book</ref>

Creation of wave mechanics

In January 1926, Schrödinger published in Annalen der Physik the paper "Template:Lang" (Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> on wave mechanics and presented what is now known as the Schrödinger equation. In this paper, he gave a "derivation" of the wave equation for time-independent systems and showed that it gave the correct energy eigenvalues for a hydrogen-like atom. This paper has been universally celebrated as one of the most important achievements of the twentieth century and created a revolution in most areas of quantum mechanics and indeed of all physics and chemistry. A second paper was submitted just four weeks later that solved the quantum harmonic oscillator, rigid rotor, and diatomic molecule problems and gave a new derivation of the Schrödinger equation. A third paper, published in May, showed the equivalence of his approach to that of Werner Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and gave the treatment of the Stark effect. A fourth paper in this series showed how to treat problems in which the system changes with time, as in scattering problems. In this paper, he introduced a complex solution to the wave equation in order to prevent the occurrence of fourth- and sixth-order differential equations. Schrödinger ultimately reduced the order of the equation to one.<ref>The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics—and How They Shook the Scientific World, Stephen Hawking, (editor), the papers by Schrödinger.</ref>

Building on a paper by Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, which introduced the thought-experiment now known as the EPR paradox, Schrödinger published in 1935 a paper that codified the concept of quantum entanglement.<ref name="Schroeder-2017">Template:Cite journal</ref> He deemed this quantum phenomenon "the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought."<ref name="Schrödinger1935">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Schrödinger was not entirely comfortable with the implications of quantum theory referring to his theory as "wave mechanics".<ref>Beller, Mara. "Matrix Theory before Schrodinger: Philosophy, Problems, Consequences." Isis, vol. 74, no. 4, [The University of Chicago Press, The History of Science Society], 1983, pp. 469–91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/232208 Template:Webarchive. "The Gottingen-Copenhagen physicists, however, presented a united front. They cooperated intimately, each contributing extensively to the emergence of the new philosophy. The distribution of talents in the Gottingen-Copenhagen group could not have been better. The youthful vigor and brilliance of Heisenberg, together with the mathematical virtuosity of Dirac, Jordan, and Born, were balanced by Bohr's philosophical profundity and Pauli's penetrating critical mind."</ref><ref>Stone, A. Douglas (2013). "Confusion and Then Uncertainty." Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian. Princeton University Press, pp. 268–78, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fgxvv.32."Ironically, Schrödinger was correct; his method was much more intuitive and visualizable than that of Heisenberg and Born, and it has become the overwhelmingly preferred method for presenting the subject. But with Born's probabilistic interpretation of the wave-function, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Bohr's mysterious complementarity principle, the 'Copenhagen interpretation' reigned supreme, and the term 'wave mechanics' disappeared; it was all quantum mechanics."</ref> He wrote about the probability interpretation of quantum mechanics, saying, "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." (In order to ridicule the viewpoints of Bohr and Heisenberg on quantum mechanics, he contrived the famous thought experiment called the Schrödinger's cat paradox.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was said to have angrily complained to his students that "now the damned Göttingen physicists use my beautiful wave mechanics for calculating their shitty matrix elements."<ref>Rechenberg, Helmut. "Werner Heisenberg: Die Sprache der Atome" Springer-Verlag, 2010, pp. 485, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-540-69222-5 Template:Webarchive. "Noch drastischer sollte Schrödinger seine Meinung im Züricher Seminar nach einem Vortrag über eine neue Arbeit der Konkurrenten ausgedrückt haben. Er setzte sich nachher leicht verzweifelt und verärgert auf die Straße und sagte: "Jetzt benützen die verdammten Göttinger meine schöne Wellenmechanik zur Ausrechnung ihrer Scheiß-Matrixelemente."</ref>)

Work on a unified field theory

Following his work on quantum mechanics, Schrödinger devoted considerable effort to working on a unified field theory that would unite gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces within the basic framework of general relativity, doing the work with an extended correspondence with Albert Einstein.<ref name="Halpern">Template:Cite web</ref> In 1947, he announced a result, "Affine Field Theory",<ref>Schrödinger, E., Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 51A (1947), pp. 163–171 Template:Webarchive. (accessed 3 November 2017)</ref> in a talk at the Royal Irish Academy, but the announcement was criticized by Einstein as "preliminary" and failed to lead to the desired unified theory.<ref name="Halpern" /> Following the failure of his attempt at unification, Schrödinger gave up his work on unification and turned to other topics. Additionally, Schrödinger reportedly never collaborated with a major physicist for the remainder of his career.<ref name="Halpern" />

Color

Schrödinger had a strong interest in psychology, in particular color perception and colorimetry (German: Template:Lang). He spent quite a few years of his life working on these questions and published a series of papers in this area:

• "Theorie der Pigmente von größter Leuchtkraft", Annalen der Physik, (4), 62, (1920), 603–22 (Theory of Pigments with Highest Luminosity)
• "Grundlinien einer Theorie der Farbenmetrik im Tagessehen", Annalen der Physik, (4), 63, (1920), 397–456; 481–520 (Outline of a theory of colour measurement for daylight vision)
• "Farbenmetrik", Zeitschrift für Physik, 1, (1920), 459–66 (Colour measurement).
• "Über das Verhältnis der Vierfarben- zur Dreifarben-Theorie", Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Klasse, Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 134, 471, (On The Relationship of Four-Color Theory to Three-Color Theory).
• "Lehre von der strahlenden Energie", Müller-Pouillets Lehrbuch der Physik und Meteorologie, Vol 2, Part 1 (1926) (Thresholds of Color Differences).

His work on the psychology of color perception follows the step of Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz in the same area. Some of these papers have been translated into English and can be found in: Sources of Colour Science, Ed. David L. MacAdam, MIT Press (1970) and in Erwin Schrödinger’s Color Theory, Translated with Modern Commentary, Ed. Keith K. Niall, Springer (2017). Template:ISBN Template:Doi.

Interest in philosophy

Schrödinger had a deep interest in philosophy, and was influenced by the works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Baruch Spinoza. In his 1956 lecture "Mind and Matter", he said that "The world extended in space and time is but our representation."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> This is a repetition of the first words of Schopenhauer's main work. Schopenhauer's works also introduced him to Indian philosophy, more specifically to the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta’s interpretation. He once took on a particular line of thought: "If the world is indeed created by our act of observation, there should be billions of such worlds, one for each of us. How come your world and my world are the same? If something happens in my world, does it happen in your world, too? What causes all these worlds to synchronize with each other?".

There is obviously only one alternative, namely the unification of minds or consciousnesses. Their multiplicity is only apparent, in truth there is only one mind. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads.<ref name="Schrödinger">Schrödinger, Erwin. What is life? Epilogue: On Determinism and Free Will</ref>

Schrödinger discussed topics such as consciousness, the mind–body problem, sense perception, free will, and objective reality in his lectures and writings.<ref name="Schrödinger" /><ref>Schrödinger, Erwin.Mind and Matter</ref><ref>Schrödinger, Erwin. My View of the World</ref>

Schrödinger's attitude with respect to the relations between Eastern and Western thought was one of prudence, expressing appreciation for Eastern philosophy while also admitting that some of the ideas did not fit with empirical approaches to natural philosophy.<ref name="Bitbol">Template:Cite journal</ref> Some commentators have suggested that Schrödinger was so deeply immersed in a non-dualist Vedântic-like view that it may have served as a broad framework or subliminal inspiration for much of his work including that in theoretical physics.<ref name="Bitbol" /> Schrödinger expressed sympathy for the idea of Tat Tvam Asi, stating "you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you."<ref>Schrödinger, Erwin. My View of the World, chapter iv, and What Is life?</ref>

Schrödinger said that "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."<ref>"General Scientific and Popular Papers." In Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Vieweg & Sohn. p. 334.</ref>

He also anticipated the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1952, he suggested that the different terms of a superposition evolving under the Schrödinger equation are "not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Schrödinger's later writings also contain elements resembling the modal interpretation originated by Bas van Fraassen. Because Schrödinger subscribed to a kind of post-Machian neutral monism, in which "matter" and "mind" are only different aspects or arrangements of the same common elements, treating the wavefunction as physical and treating it as information became interchangeable.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Legacy

The philosophical issues raised by Schrödinger's cat are still debated today and remain his most enduring legacy in popular science, while Schrödinger's equation is his most enduring legacy at a more technical level. Schrödinger is one of several individuals who have been called "the father of quantum mechanics". The large crater Schrödinger,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> on the far side of the Moon, is named after him. The Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics was founded in Vienna in 1992.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Schrödinger's portrait was the main feature of the design of the 1983–97 Austrian 1000-schilling banknote, the second-highest denomination.<ref>"Schilling-Banknoten der Oesterreichischen Nationalbank 1945–2002" Template:Webarchive, from the Austrian National Bank</ref>

A building is named after him at the University of Limerick, in Limerick, Ireland,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as is the 'Erwin Schrödinger Zentrum' at Adlershof in Berlin<ref name="EYCNDA">Template:Cite web</ref> and the Route Schrödinger at CERN, Prévessin, France.

Schrödinger's 126th birthday anniversary in 2013 was celebrated with a Google Doodle.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Awards and honors

File:Erwin Schrödinger Nobel Prize diploma.jpg

Erwin Schrödinger's Nobel Prize diploma

• 1920: Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
• 1927: Matteucci Medal of the Accademia nazionale delle scienze
• 1931: Honorary membership of the Royal Irish Academy
• 1933: Nobel Prize in Physics for the formulation of the Schrödinger equation – shared with Paul Dirac<ref name="nobel">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1937: Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society
• 1949: Foreign membership of the Royal Society
• 1956: Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

See also List of things named after Erwin Schrödinger.

Published works

• Science and the human temperament, Allen & Unwin (1935), translated and introduced by James Murphy, with a foreword by Ernest Rutherford.
• Nature and the Greeks and Science and Humanism, Cambridge University Press (1996) Template:ISBN.
• The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Ox Bow Press (1995) Template:ISBN.
• Statistical Thermodynamics, Dover Publications (1989) Template:ISBN.
• Collected papers, Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn (1984) Template:ISBN.
• My View of the World, Ox Bow Press (1983) Template:ISBN.
• Expanding Universes, Cambridge University Press (1956).
• Space-Time Structure, Cambridge University Press (1950) Template:ISBN.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• What Is Life?, Macmillan (1944).
• What Is Life? & Mind and Matter, Cambridge University Press (1974) Template:ISBN.

See also the list of Erwin Schrödinger's publications (Template:Webarchive), compiled by Auguste Dick, Gabriele Kerber, Wolfgang Kerber and Karl von Meyenn.

References

Sources

• Template:Cite book
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External links

• Erwin Schrödinger and others on Austrian banknotes
• Template:YouTube
• "biographie" (in German) or
• "Biography from the Austrian Central Library for Physics" (in English)
• Encyclopædia Britannica article on Erwin Schrödinger
• Template:Nobelprize with his Nobel Lecture, 12 December 1933 The Fundamental Idea of Wave Mechanics
• Vallabhan, C. P. Girija, "Indian influences on Quantum Dynamics" [ed. Schrödinger's interest in Vedanta]
• Schrödinger Medal of the World Association of Theoretically Oriented Chemists (WATOC)
• The Discovery of New Productive Forms of Atomic Theory Nobel Banquet speech (in German)
• Annotated bibliography for Erwin Schrödinger from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
• Template:In lang Critical interdisciplinary review of Schrödinger's "What Is life?"
• Template:20th Century Press Archives
• Schrödinger in Oxford by Sir David C Clary , World Scientific, 2022