Editing Erwin Schrödinger (section)

==Biography==
===Early years===
Schrödinger was born in Erdberg, [[Vienna]], [[Austria]], on 12 August 1887, to [[Rudolf Schrödinger]] ({{linktext |cerecloth}} producer, botanist<ref>{{cite web |last1=Schrodinger |first1=Rudolf |title=The International Plant Names Index |url=https://www.ipni.org/?q=author%20std%3ASchr%C3%B6dinger |publisher=IPNI |access-date=13 August 2016 |archive-date=13 August 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210813223013/https://www.ipni.org/?q=author%20std:Schr%C3%B6dinger |url-status=live }}</ref>)<ref name="The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933">{{Cite book |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/schrodinger/biographical/ |title=Physics 1922-1941 |publisher=Elsevier Publishing Company |year=1965 |series=Nobel Lectures |location=Amsterdam |at=Erwin Schrödinger Biographical |language=en-US |via=nobelprize.org |access-date=19 February 2023 |archive-date=7 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230307163835/https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1933/schrodinger/biographical/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and Georgine Emilia Brenda Schrödinger (née Bauer) (daughter of {{interlanguage link |Alexander Bauer |de|3=Alexander Bauer (Chemiker)}}, professor of chemistry, [[TU Wien]]).{{sfn|Moore|1994|pp=13–18}} He was their only child.

His mother was of half Austrian and half English descent; his father was [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] and his mother was [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]]. He himself was an [[atheist]].<ref>{{harvnb|Moore|1994|pages=289–290}} 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>{{cite book|title=Einstein's Dice and Schrödinger's Cat|year=2015|publisher=Perseus Books Group|isbn=978-0-465-07571-3|first=Paul|last=Halpern|page=157|quote="In the presentation of a scientific problem, the other player is the good Lord. He has not only set the problem but also has devised the rules of the game--but they are not completely known, half of them are left for you to discover or deduce. I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously. I shall quite briefly mention here the notorious atheism of science. The theists reproach it for this again and again. Unjustly. A personal God cannot be encountered in a world picture that becomes accessible only at the price that everything personal is excluded from it. We know that whenever God is experienced, it is an experience exactly as real as a direct sense impression, as real as one's own personality. As such He must be missing from the space-time picture. "I do not meet with God in space and time", so says the honest scientific thinker, and for that reason he is reproached by those in whose catechism it is nevertheless stated: "God is a Spirit." Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer for it"}}</ref> He also believed his scientific work was an approach to divinity in an intellectual sense.<ref>{{harvnb|Moore|1992|p=4}} 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">{{cite book|author=Hoffman, D.|title=Эрвин Шрёдингер|publisher=Мир |year=1987 |pages=13–17}}</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|thumb|upright|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 University|Breslau]] (now Wrocław, Poland).<ref name="The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933"/>

In 1921, he moved to the [[University of Zurich|University of Zürich]]. In 1927, he succeeded [[Max Planck]] at the [[Humboldt University of Berlin|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,{{sfn|Moore|1992|pp=278 ff.}} 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>[https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz106819.html "Schrödinger, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110427042804/https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz106819.html |date=27 April 2011 }} 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>{{cite web |url=https://www.jta.org/1940/05/20/archive/bombay-university-names-refugee-scientist-to-faculty |title=Bombay University Names Refugee Scientist to Faculty |publisher=Jewish Telegraphic Agency |date=20 May 1940 |access-date=14 August 2016 |archive-date=27 October 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161027074754/http://www.jta.org/1940/05/20/archive/bombay-university-names-refugee-scientist-to-faculty |url-status=live }}</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>{{cite journal |last1=Bhaumik |first1=Mani L. |title=Is Schrödinger's Cat Alive? |journal=Quanta |date=2017 |volume=6 |issue=1 |page=75 |doi=10.12743/quanta.v6i1.68 |doi-access=free|arxiv=2211.17086 }}</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">{{cite book|first=Akhlesh|last=Lakhtakia|title=Models and Modelers of Hydrogen: Thales, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr, Sommerfeld, Goudsmit, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Dirac, Sallhofer|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6lC6IG7NXmcC&pg=PA147|year=1996|publisher=World Scientific|isbn=978-981-02-2302-1|pages=147–}}</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>{{cite web |title=Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger |url=https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Schrodinger/ |publisher=[[MacTutor History of Mathematics archive]] |access-date=14 August 2016 |archive-date=4 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170104063158/http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Printonly/Schrodinger.html |url-status=live }}</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 [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[Ghent University|Ghent Universities]].<ref name="mactutorB" /><ref name="Lakhtakia1996"/>

[[File:DIAS 1942 photo.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|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 [[Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies|Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin]].<ref>{{cite web |first=Brian |last=Daugherty |title=Brief Chronology |work=Erwin Schrödinger |url=http://bdaugherty.tripod.com/berlin/schrodinger.html |access-date=10 December 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120309141433/http://bdaugherty.tripod.com/berlin/schrodinger.html |archive-date=9 March 2012}}</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>{{cite news |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-quantum-leap-to-clontarf-1.454580 |title=A quantum leap to Clontarf |newspaper=The Irish Times |access-date=4 June 2020 |archive-date=27 September 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200927225530/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/a-quantum-leap-to-clontarf-1.454580 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=he_UDAAAQBAJ&q=erwin+schr%C3%B6dinger+plaque+dublin&pg=PT13 |title=Treasure Palaces: Great Writers Visit Great Museums |first=Maggie |last=Fergusson |date=10 November 2016 |publisher=Profile |isbn=978-1-78283-278-2 |via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://openplaques.org/plaques/9190 |title=Erwin Schrödinger blue plaque |website=openplaques.org |access-date=10 June 2020 |archive-date=10 June 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200610214232/https://openplaques.org/plaques/9190 |url-status=live }}</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."{{sfn|Moore|1992|p=373}} 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>{{Cite journal |last=Clary |first=David C. |title=Foreign Membership of the Royal Society: Schrödinger and Heisenberg? |journal=Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science |year=2022 |volume=77 |issue=3 |pages=513–536 |doi=10.1098/rsnr.2021.0082|s2cid=247599443 |doi-access=free }}</ref> He published about fifty further [[Academic publishing#Scholarly paper|papers]] on various topics, including his explorations of [[Classical unified field theories|unified field theory]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Erwin Schrödinger - Important Scientists – The Physics of the Universe |url=https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_schrodinger.html |access-date=2023-02-19 |website=www.physicsoftheuniverse.com |archive-date=19 February 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230219112213/https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/scientists_schrodinger.html |url-status=live }}</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,{{clarify|reason=wording implies the conferences already existed and that each began with one of the lectures, as opposed to the lectures being instituted because of the lecture series|date=March 2025}} and buildings at the College were named after him.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://universitytimes.ie/2018/02/fifty-years-after-a-famous-talk-schrodinger-is-still-teaching-trinity-lessons|title=Seventy-Five Years After a Famous Talk, Schrodinger is Still Teaching Trinity Lessons|first1=Dillon|last1=Hennessy|year=2018|publisher=University Times|location=Dublin}}</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 [[organism]]s. 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>{{cite book |last=Crick |first=Francis |title=What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery |publisher=Basic Books |year=1988 |isbn=0-465-09137-7 |location=New York}}</ref>

Schrödinger stayed in Dublin until retiring in 1955.

A manuscript "Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]]"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20130418015552/http://www.kingshospital.ie/thekingshospital/Files/Schroedinger%20Bluecoat.pdf "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) [http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0418/1224314875355.html 'Quantum humour' beams back after absence] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120418061601/https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0418/1224314875355.html |date=18 April 2012 }}. ''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>{{Cite news|last=Ahlstrom|first=Dick|title='Quantum humour' beams back after absence|url=https://www.irishtimes.com/news/quantum-humour-beams-back-after-absence-1.503342|access-date=2021-12-17|newspaper=The Irish Times|language=en|archive-date=16 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116191431/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/quantum-humour-beams-back-after-absence-1.503342|url-status=live}}</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–particle duality#Wave-only view|wave idea alone]], causing much controversy.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/biographies/bio_schrodinger-erwin.html|title=Nuclear Files: Library: Biographies: Erwin Schrödinger|access-date=14 September 2021|archive-date=19 February 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230219131850/http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/biographies/bio_schrodinger-erwin.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>Schrödinger, Are There Quantum Jumps, 1952. http://www.ub.edu/hcub/hfq/sites/default/files/Quantum_Jumps_I.pdf {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210411004001/http://www.ub.edu/hcub/hfq/sites/default/files/Quantum_Jumps_I.pdf |date=11 April 2021 }}</ref>

===Tuberculosis and death===
[[File:Grave Schroedinger.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Annemarie and Erwin Schrödinger's gravesite; above the name plate [[Schrödinger equation|Schrödinger's quantum mechanical wave equation]] is inscribed on a circular plaque:{{Equation box 1|equation=<math>i \hbar \dot \Psi = H \Psi</math>}}]]
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.{{sfn|Moore|1992|p=194}} On 4 January 1961, Schrödinger died of tuberculosis, aged 73, in [[Vienna]].{{sfn|Moore|1992|p=10}} 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>{{harvnb|Moore|1992|p=482}}: "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>