50 Fun Facts About Erwin Schrödinger

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

The two later tied for eighth in a Physics World poll of the greatest physicists of all time.

The 1933 Nobel citation praised the discovery of 'new productive forms of' what?

It came the same year he fled Nazi Germany for Oxford.

Which now-ubiquitous term did Schrödinger coin in 1935?

He called it the feature 'that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought'.

In which city was Schrödinger born in 1887?

He was an only child; his mother was half Austrian and half English.

What was the profession of Schrödinger's father Rudolf?

His mother was the daughter of a chemistry professor at the Vienna technical university.

Schrödinger learned English outside school thanks to a grandmother from where?

It served him well later at Oxford and in Dublin.

Though raised by a Catholic father and Lutheran mother, Schrödinger described himself as what?

He nonetheless drew heavily on Eastern religion and pantheism and used religious symbolism in his writing.

Under which professor did Schrödinger receive his PhD in 1910?

He then became assistant to Franz Exner and finished his habilitation under him in 1914.

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

His postings included Gorizia, Duino and Prosecco on the Italian front.

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

It was during these years that he wrote the wave-mechanics papers.

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

He left in 1933 in disgust at Nazi antisemitism, though he was not Jewish himself.

After leaving Germany in 1933, Schrödinger became a Fellow of which Oxford college?

The Nobel Prize arrived soon after he did.

Why did Schrödinger's position at Oxford not work out?

The same household arrangement probably cost him a permanent post at Princeton too.

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

It lasted only until the Anschluss two years later.

Schrödinger had also accepted a chair of physics at which university in India?

He never took it up; Graz won out.

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

The two later exchanged many letters on unified field theory as well.

On what grounds did the University of Graz dismiss Schrödinger in 1938?

He had publicly recanted his anti-Nazi views to try to stay, a duplicity he later regretted in a letter to Einstein.

Ordered not to leave Austria in 1938, Schrödinger fled with his wife to which country?

From there he took visiting posts at Oxford and Ghent before Ireland beckoned.

Which Irish leader personally invited Schrödinger to settle in Dublin in 1939?

Schrödinger wrote to him personally again to secure a visa for his mistress.

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.

In which Dublin suburb did Schrödinger live modestly on Kincora Road?

A plaque marks the house, and another his workplace in Merrion Square.

Schrödinger told the Irish Press that Austrians had a 'deeper connection' with which people?

He pointed to supposedly Celtic place names in the Austrian Alps.

In which year did Schrödinger become a naturalised Irish citizen?

He kept his Austrian citizenship as well.

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

It imagined a complex molecule carrying the genetic code, a decade before the double helix.

Which two scientists credited Schrödinger's book with steering them toward the structure of DNA?

Watson's memoir says it inspired him to research the gene; Crick recalled its speculations about how genetic information might be stored.

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

The idea that life keeps itself ordered by exporting disorder remains a staple of biophysics.

At a 1956 World Power Conference lecture, Schrödinger refused to discuss nuclear power and gave what?

He had returned to Vienna as an emeritus professor after Austria regained neutrality.

Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a sanatorium in Arosa while being treated for what?

The disease that shaped his 1920s eventually killed him, in Vienna in 1961.

Schrödinger is buried in a Catholic cemetery in which Tyrolean village?

The priest allowed it after learning he was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Why was the non-Catholic Schrödinger allowed burial in a Catholic cemetery?

The priest in charge of the graveyard made the exception on learning of the membership.

Schrödinger's 1920 Haitinger Prize rewarded his early work on what?

His 1913 experiments confirmed his own estimates and those of Victor Hess, the discoverer of cosmic rays.

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

It showed the equation gave the correct energy levels for a hydrogen-like atom.

Schrödinger's 1926 paper is titled 'Quantization as an ___ Problem'. What word fills the gap?

Three more papers followed within months, treating the harmonic oscillator, the Stark effect and time-dependent systems.

Schrödinger's third 1926 paper showed his wave approach was equivalent to which rival formulation?

It also gave the first wave-mechanical treatment of the Stark effect.

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

The cat is neither alive nor dead until observed, a conclusion he found absurd.

Schrödinger complained the 'damned Gottingen physicists' used his wave mechanics to calculate their 'shitty' what?

He never liked where his theory ended up, saying he was 'sorry I ever had anything to do with it'.

Schrödinger's 1935 paper codifying entanglement built on which famous thought experiment?

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen had used it to argue that quantum mechanics was incomplete.

Einstein dismissed Schrödinger's 1947 'Affine Field Theory' as what?

After the failure Schrödinger gave up on unification and reportedly never again collaborated with a major physicist.

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

He followed Newton, Maxwell and Helmholtz into colorimetry.

Which philosopher did Schrödinger echo in opening Mind and Matter: 'The world... is but our representation'?

Schopenhauer also led him to the Upanishads and Advaita Vedanta.

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

He wondered how, if observation creates the world, everyone's world could be the same.

Which quantum interpretation did Schrödinger anticipate in 1952, saying superposed terms 'all really happen'?

Hugh Everett's formal version came five years later.

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

The couple lived in an open marriage from the late 1920s; the affair did not dent the two men's friendship.

Schrödinger's grandson Terry Rudolph followed him into which career?

He teaches at Imperial College London.

Schrödinger's portrait dominated which Austrian banknote from 1983 to 1997?

It was the second-highest denomination in circulation.

Where is the lunar crater named after Schrödinger?

An international institute for mathematical physics in Vienna also bears his name.

Schrödinger gave three major 1943 lectures, still marked by conferences, at which Irish institution?

Buildings at the college were later named after him.

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

He liked Exner's idea that conservation laws might be merely statistical, an attraction that lasted a lifetime.

In 1920 Schrödinger became an assistant to Max Wien at which German university?

That September he was made associate professor at Stuttgart, and a year later full professor at Breslau, before Zurich called in 1921.

In which Irish city does a university building carry Schrödinger's name?

He is also remembered by the Erwin Schrödinger Zentrum in Berlin's Adlershof and the Route Schrödinger at CERN.