49 Fun Facts About Erwin Schrödinger

Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with which British physicist?

Paul Dirac had recast quantum theory to obey relativity, and his equation predicted antimatter before anyone had seen it: the positron turned up in a cloud chamber in 1932, a year before the prize.

Schrödinger's 1933 Nobel Prize citation praised the discovery of 'new productive forms of' what?

Atomic theory was the committee's phrase for wave mechanics: one equation now yielded an atom's energy levels, where the older orbit model had to impose them by rule.

Which now-ubiquitous term did Schrödinger coin in 1935?

Quantum entanglement, his English for the German Verschränkung, struck him as 'the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics'; the link between distant particles now drives quantum computing and cryptography.

Which Greek letter stands for the wave function in the Schrödinger equation?

Psi is the wave function; Schrödinger took it for a real physical wave, but physicists came to read its square as only the odds of finding a particle, an interpretation he never accepted.

Whose 1924 idea that matter behaves as waves inspired Schrödinger's equation?

Louis de Broglie proposed matter waves in his doctoral thesis; Schrödinger read it late in 1925, gave a seminar on it, and within weeks had found a wave equation to match.

Schrödinger spoke English from childhood because his mother's mother came from where?

Britain was his grandmother's home: her family came from Leamington Spa, and with a bilingual mother he heard English in the house alongside German and picked up the two languages almost together.

In Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, the cat's fate depends on whether what happens?

A radioactive atom decays, or doesn't, within the hour; if it does, a Geiger counter trips a hammer that smashes a flask of poison, so the theory seemed to leave the cat both dead and alive.

Whose theoretical physics lectures had the greatest influence on the student Schrödinger?

Friedrich Hasenohrl had just succeeded Boltzmann, and his 1907 inaugural lecture on the older man's ideas impressed the student so deeply that it shaped his thinking for life.

During the First World War Schrödinger served as a commissioned officer in what?

The fortress artillery sent him to the Isonzo front, where he was cited for commanding a battery in battle and still managed to post physics papers to the journals from his position.

In 1921 Schrödinger moved to which Swiss university, where he stayed until 1927?

Zurich ended a run of three job moves in eighteen months; he stayed six years and, in one six-month burst in 1926, wrote the papers that founded wave mechanics.

Whom did Schrödinger succeed at the University of Berlin in 1927?

Max Planck, the man who had launched quantum theory, was retiring; Schrödinger kept the chair only until 1933, when he walked out of Germany rather than live under the persecution of Jews.

After leaving Germany in 1933, Schrödinger became a Fellow of which Oxford college, then home to CS Lewis?

Magdalen had only just admitted him, in November 1933, when word came that he had won the Nobel Prize; he never settled there, and went home to Austria after three years.

Besides his wife Anny, who shared Schrödinger's household in wartime Ireland?

His mistress and their daughter came too: Hilde March was married to his colleague Arthur March, yet she, Anny and young Ruth all lived with him under one roof.

After visa delays killed an Edinburgh post in 1936, Schrödinger took a chair at which Austrian university?

Graz brought him home to Austria from his fellowship at Oxford; two years later German troops marched in and he lost the post.

Physicists call the Schrödinger equation the quantum counterpart of which classical law?

Newton's second law turns the forces on a ball or a planet into a definite path; Schrödinger's equation does that job for the wave function, but all it yields is the probability of where a particle will be.

Schrödinger proposed his famous cat thought experiment in 1935 after extensive correspondence with whom?

Albert Einstein had sent him a rival image that August, a charge of gunpowder left in a blend of exploded and not-yet-exploded states; Schrödinger answered with a cat.

On what grounds was Schrödinger dismissed from his Austrian chair in 1938?

'Political unreliability' was the verdict even though he had published a letter praising the new regime, a climbdown he regretted for the rest of his life.

Forbidden to leave Austria in 1938, Schrödinger and his wife fled first to which country?

Italy was the escape route: newly sacked, he and his wife slipped away to Rome, then travelled on to Oxford and a visiting post in Belgium.

Which Irish leader personally invited Schrödinger to settle in his country in 1939?

Eamon de Valera had been a mathematician before turning to politics and wanted world-class science for Ireland, so he built the job around the stranded Nobel laureate.

In Ireland, Schrödinger directed the School of Theoretical Physics at which newly established body?

He held the post from 1940 until his retirement in 1955.

The famous 1927 group photograph of Schrödinger, Marie Curie and fellow quantum pioneers was taken at which conference?

The Solvay Conference brought 29 physicists to Brussels in October 1927 to thrash out the brand-new quantum theory; 17 of them, Schrödinger included, were past or future Nobel winners.

Schrödinger first tested his wave equation by correctly predicting the energy levels of which atom?

Hydrogen, with its single electron, was the proving ground: over the Christmas holidays of 1925 he found that his new equation gave its spectrum, and the paper followed within weeks.

In Schrödinger's own 1935 description, which poison threatens the cat?

Hydrocyanic acid, the acid behind cyanide, waits in a small flask beneath a hammer; Schrödinger added drily that the device 'must be secured against direct interference by the cat'.

What was the title of Schrödinger's influential 1944 book on genetics from a physicist's viewpoint?

What Is Life? grew out of public lectures and argued that heredity must rest on a molecular code, an idea that drew a generation of physicists into biology.

Which two scientists credited Schrödinger's 1944 book with turning them toward the gene?

Watson and Crick both said so: Watson wrote that it set him on the hunt for the gene, and in 1953 Crick sent Schrödinger a letter saying how much the book had influenced the pair.

Schrödinger's 1944 book introduced which thermodynamic concept, meaning order fed on by living things?

Negentropy began as his phrase 'negative entropy': a living thing stays ordered, he argued, by drawing order from its food and shedding disorder, and a French physicist later shortened the name.

Years before DNA's structure was found, Schrödinger proposed that genes are stored in what?

An aperiodic crystal was his name for a stable molecule whose non-repeating pattern of atoms could hold hereditary information; he pictured a protein, but DNA turned out to be just such a structure.

Which disease killed Schrödinger in January 1961?

Tuberculosis killed him less than five years after he came home to a chair created for him in Vienna; a grave illness struck about a year after his return and he never fully recovered.

Schrödinger is buried in which Tyrolean village, host of a yearly European Forum he regularly attended?

Alpbach was the village he loved and chose: he spent much of his last years there and was buried there as he wished, under a cross that carries his own equation.

The Edinburgh chair Schrödinger missed in 1936 went instead to which fellow quantum pioneer?

Max Born, who had lost his own post at Göttingen in 1933, took the chair that October and kept it into the 1950s; Schrödinger went home to Austria instead and was sacked within two years.

What did the schoolboy Schrödinger, a star pupil in every subject, say he hated?

Memorising dates and facts was what he hated: he loved mathematics, physics and the strict logic of ancient grammar, and a classmate recalled him solving blackboard problems 'with playful facility'.

Schrödinger's landmark January 1926 wave-mechanics paper appeared in which journal?

Annalen der Physik received the first instalment in January 1926 and three more within six months, a burst of work that had begun on a winter holiday in the Swiss Alps.

Schrödinger's cat, both alive and dead until the box is opened, illustrates which quantum principle?

Superposition lets a quantum system sit in a blend of states until it is measured; by tying a cat's fate to a single quantum event, Schrödinger meant to show how absurd that looks at everyday scale.

In 1926 Schrödinger showed his wave approach was equivalent to which rival formulation of quantum theory?

Matrix mechanics, a rival abstract algebra published the year before, looked nothing like his waves, yet he proved that the two always gave identical results.

Schrödinger devised the cat thought experiment to ridicule whose interpretation of quantum mechanics?

Bohr and Heisenberg held that a quantum system has no definite state until it is measured; Schrödinger scaled that claim up to a cat to show how 'quite ridiculous' he found it.

Why did Schrödinger turn down an associate professorship in Austria in 1920?

It paid too little to marry on: his fiancée Anny was earning more as a secretary than the post offered, so he took a job in Germany instead and they wed that spring.

Schrödinger's 1935 papers on quantum theory were a reply to which famous thought experiment?

The EPR paradox, named for its three authors' initials, argued in 1935 that quantum mechanics must be incomplete; Schrödinger answered within the year, and physicists were still testing the puzzle in the laboratory decades later.

In 1947 Schrödinger told the Irish press he had found which long-sought prize of physics?

A unified field theory, joining gravity and electromagnetism, was the breakthrough he announced to the Academy and the newspapers; the claim proved premature, and the fiasco left him embarrassed.

Outside physics, Schrödinger published a series of papers on which aspect of psychology?

Colour perception absorbed him for years: he measured and computed the geometry of 'colour space', and specialists came to accept his account of how the kinds of colour blindness are related.

Alongside Spinoza, which philosopher's writings did Schrödinger say he was 'deeply immersed' in as a young man?

Schopenhauer was on the list of authors he devoured as a young man; he had meant to give himself to philosophy, until the collapse of Austria-Hungary took away the post that would have let him.

Schrödinger's view that 'in truth there is only one mind' he called the doctrine of what?

The Upanishads, India's ancient philosophical scriptures, teach that all selves are one; he returned to the idea all his life, and his last book set out a worldview modelled on their Vedanta teaching.

Which quantum interpretation did Schrödinger anticipate in 1952, saying the different outcomes 'all really happen simultaneously'?

Many-worlds was set out formally by Hugh Everett five years later; Schrödinger had only floated the idea in a seminar talk that stayed unpublished until the 1990s.

Schrödinger's wife Anny had a long relationship with which mathematician, a close friend of her husband?

Hermann Weyl was his closest colleague in the 1920s and supplied the deep mathematics that helped him to the wave equation; the affair with Anny never dented the two men's friendship.

Physicist Terry Rudolph discovered which family tie to Schrödinger only after earning his own physics degree?

He was his grandson, yet chose quantum physics without knowing it; the family tie came out only after he had his degree, and he went on to become a professor of the subject.

Where is the lunar crater named after Schrödinger?

On the far side of the Moon, near the south pole, the crater began with an impact that threw up a ring of peaks; a large volcanic eruption later broke out on its floor.

Schrödinger delivered his three famous public lectures of February 1943 at which Irish institution?

Trinity College Dublin hosted the three talks; printed the next year as a short book, they reached far beyond physics and helped pull a generation of scientists toward the gene.

Which of his university teachers did Schrödinger assist from 1911 and complete his habilitation under?

Franz Exner ran the experimental laboratory where the young theorist worked for years; Schrödinger soon judged himself no experimenter, yet said the bench work grounded all his later theory.

In 1934 Schrödinger lectured at which American university, then turned down its offer of a permanent post?

Princeton lost him to Europe: two years after its offer he chose a chair in Austria instead, just ahead of the Nazi takeover that would cost him the post.

How was Schrödinger educated until about the age of ten?

At home, by private tutors and above all by his father, whom he called his 'friend, teacher and tireless partner in conversation'; he entered the Gymnasium at eleven and shone at once.