Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, sometimes written as ' or ', was an Austrian–Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for devising the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term "quantum entanglement" in 1935. Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac "for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory."
In addition, Schrödinger wrote many works on various aspects of physics: statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, physics of dielectrics, color 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. He also wrote on philosophy and theoretical biology. In popular culture, he is best known for his "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment. He and Dirac tied for eighth in a Physics World poll of the greatest physicists of all time.
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. He returned to Vienna in 1956, with an emeritus professor position, and died of tuberculosis in 1961. In 1989, allegations of sexual abuse of several minors emerged.
Early life and education
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was born on 12 August 1887 in Vienna, the only child of Rudolf Schrödinger, a botanist, and Georgine Emilia Brenda Bauer, the daughter of a chemistry professor at TU Wien. His mother was of half Austrian and half English descent. His father was Catholic and his mother was Lutheran. Although Schrödinger was an atheist, he had strong interests in Eastern religions and pantheism, and used religious symbolism in his works. He believed his scientific work was an approach to divinity in an intellectual sense.Schrödinger was also able to learn English outside school, as his maternal grandmother was British. From 1906 to 1910, he studied under Franz S. Exner and Friedrich Hasenöhrl at the University of Vienna. He received his Ph.D. under Hasenöhrl in 1910. He also conducted experimental work with Karl Wilhelm Friedrich "Fritz" Kohlrausch. The following year, he became an assistant to Exner, under whom he completed his habilitation in 1914.
Career
From 1914 to 1918, Schödinger participated in war work as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery. In 1920, he became an assistant to Max Wien at the University of Jena, and in September attained the position of ausserordentlicher Professor at the University of Stuttgart. The following year, he became ordentlicher Professor at the University of Breslau.In 1921, Schrödinger moved to the University of Zurich. In 1927, he succeeded Max Planck at the University of Berlin. In 1933, he decided to leave Germany because he strongly disapproved of the Nazis' antisemitism. He became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. Soon after arriving, 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, were not met with acceptance. In 1934, he 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. 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 1936. He had also accepted the offer of chair position at the Department of Physics at Allahabad University in India.
In the midst of these tenure issues in 1935, after extensive correspondence with Albert Einstein, Schrödinger proposed what is now called the "Schrödinger's cat" thought experiment.
In 1938, after the Anschluss, Schrödinger had problems in Graz because of his flight from Germany in 1933 and his known opposition to Nazism. He issued a statement recanting this opposition, which he later regretted, explaining to Einstein: "I wanted to remain free – and could not do so without great duplicity". 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 took up visiting positions at Oxford and Ghent universities.
Dublin
In 1939, Schrödinger received a personal invitation from Éamon de Valera, Ireland's Taoiseach, to reside in Dublin. The following year, he joined the newly-established Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies as Director of the School of Theoretical Physics, a position he held until his retirement in 1955. He lived modestly on Kincora Road, Clontarf; a plaque has been erected at his Clontarf residence and at the address of his workplace in Merrion Square.Schrödinger believed that, as an Austrian, he had a unique relationship with Ireland; in October 1940, a writer from the Irish Press interviewed Schrödinger, who spoke of the 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." He became a naturalized Irish citizen in 1948, but also retained his Austrian citizenship. He published about fifty further papers on various topics, including his explorations of unified field theory.
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, and buildings at the College were named after him.
In 1944, Schrödinger 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.
A manuscript "Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of Galileo" from this time resurfaced at The King's Hospital boarding school, Dublin, after it was written for the school's 1955 edition of their Blue Coat, Schrödinger's last year in Dublin.
Later life and death
In 1956, following the neutralization of Austria in 1955, Schödinger returned to Vienna to become a professor emeritus at the University of Vienna.At an important lecture during the World Power Conference, Schrödinger refused to speak on nuclear power because of his scepticism about it and gave a philosophical lecture instead. During this period, he turned from mainstream quantum mechanics' definition of wave–particle duality and promoted the wave idea alone, causing much controversy.
Schrödinger suffered from tuberculosis and several times in the 1920s stayed at a sanatorium in Arosa, Switzerland. It was there that he formulated his wave equation.
Schrödinger died of tuberculosis on 4 January 1961 in Vienna at the age of 73. Although not Catholic, he was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Alpbach, after the priest in charge of the cemetery learnt Schrödinger was a Member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Research and interests
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, he wrote an article titled Dielectrism. That same year, he 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 Hess. For this work, he was awarded the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1920. 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, he performed his last physical experiment on coherent light and subsequently focused on theoretical studies.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.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. 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.