Erwin Schrodinger Biography Quotes 10 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrodinger was born on 12 August 1887 in Vienna, then part of Austria-Hungary. His father, Rudolf Schrodinger, was a successful businessman with a strong amateur interest in science, and his mother, Georgine Emilia, came from a family with cultural and international connections. A gifted student, he attended the Akademisches Gymnasium in Vienna and then studied physics at the University of Vienna. There he was taught and influenced by Franz Exner and Friedrich Hasenoehrl, who represented the experimental and theoretical traditions shaped by the legacy of Ludwig Boltzmann. Schrodinger completed his doctoral studies in 1910 and briefly served as an assistant in Vienna before World War I interrupted his early career.

War and Early Academic Posts
During the war Schrodinger served as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian artillery. After returning to academic life, he moved through a sequence of short appointments in Central Europe, including posts in Jena, Stuttgart, and Breslau. These years honed his breadth across experimental and theoretical topics and prepared him for a major opportunity: in 1921 he moved to the University of Zurich to occupy a chair once held by Peter Debye. Zurich's lively scientific community, including contacts with Wolfgang Pauli and others passing through, provided the setting for his decisive work.

Wave Mechanics and the Nobel Prize
Inspired by Louis de Broglie's hypothesis of matter waves, Schrodinger developed wave mechanics in 1925, 1926. He formulated the differential equation that now bears his name, the Schrodinger equation, and demonstrated how it explained the hydrogen spectrum and the structure of atomic states. He proved the formal equivalence of his approach with Werner Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, even as he preferred a picture of continuous wave phenomena to the discrete jumps of the new quantum theory. Max Born's probabilistic interpretation of the wave function, which Schrodinger resisted, became standard, but his methods rapidly became central tools of physics. In 1933 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul A. M. Dirac for their contributions to the new atomic theory.

Berlin Years and Intellectual Exchanges
In 1927 Schrodinger accepted an invitation to Berlin to succeed Max Planck, joining one of the world's leading centers of theoretical physics. There he interacted with Albert Einstein, whose quest for clarity in quantum theory resonated with Schrodinger's own concerns. The broader debates of the era included exchanges with Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and Wolfgang Pauli about the meaning of quantum mechanics. In 1935 Schrodinger wrote essays assessing the "present situation" of quantum theory; in them he emphasized paradoxes and introduced the term entanglement (Verschrankung), as well as the famous thought experiment now known as Schrodinger's cat, intended to highlight the conceptual tensions of measurement and superposition.

Leaving Germany and the Oxford Interlude
The rise of National Socialism in 1933 made Berlin untenable for him, professionally and morally. He left Germany and moved to Britain, becoming a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. There he maintained ties with colleagues across Europe, among them Einstein and Dirac, but found the climate and personal circumstances difficult. He had married Annemarie (Anny) Bertel in 1920, and his unconventional personal life came under scrutiny in conservative academic settings.

Return to Austria, Flight, and the Dublin Institute
In the mid-1930s Schrodinger returned to Austria to accept a chair in Graz. He worked closely with Arthur March, a theoretical physicist, and maintained a significant relationship with March's wife, Hilde March, with whom he had a daughter. The annexation of Austria in 1938 forced Schrodinger to flee again. After a brief period in Italy, he accepted an invitation from Eamon de Valera, head of the Irish government and himself trained in mathematics, to help found the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. In 1940 Schrodinger became director of its School of Theoretical Physics. Dublin offered him security, a small circle of colleagues such as Walter Heitler and Cornelius Lanczos, and the freedom to range widely in ideas.

What Is Life? and Interdisciplinary Influence
In Dublin he delivered lectures that became the book What Is Life? (1944), an elegant exploration of how physics might account for hereditary order. He proposed that the genetic material could be an "aperiodic crystal", suggesting a stable yet information-rich molecular structure. The work was speculative but immensely influential, inspiring figures in the emerging field of molecular biology, including those who would later uncover the structure of DNA. Schrodinger also wrote on the philosophy of nature, notably Mind and Matter, and engaged deeply with questions about consciousness, unity of experience, and the relation between physical law and life. These writings reflected long-standing interests in philosophy, including elements of German idealism and non-Western thought, even as many physicists preferred to separate such reflections from laboratory and mathematical practice.

Later Years and Return to Vienna
Schrodinger remained in Dublin until the mid-1950s, continuing to publish on the foundations of quantum theory, statistical mechanics, and color vision. He received numerous honors in addition to the Nobel, among them high scientific decorations in Europe, including the Max Planck Medal. In 1956 he returned to the University of Vienna, where he lectured and wrote until ill health curtailed his activities. He died in Vienna on 4 January 1961 and was buried in Alpbach, Tyrol, a place he had loved.

Legacy and Relationships within a Scientific Generation
Schrodinger's life was intertwined with the central figures who forged modern physics: Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Born, Dirac, and de Broglie. He admired de Broglie's insight, debated Bohr's interpretation, and exchanged ideas with Einstein about the incomplete character of quantum descriptions. He mentored and collaborated with younger theorists and sustained scientific friendships even amid wartime displacements. His personal life, conducted with unusual candor for his time, often complicated institutional relations but did not diminish the esteem in which his scientific creativity was held.

Enduring Impact
Wave mechanics gave physics a governing equation that still frames how chemists compute molecular structures, how physicists model materials, and how engineers design quantum devices. His cat and entanglement papers continue to animate debates in the philosophy of physics and underlie today's quantum information science. What Is Life? helped bridge physics and biology, setting an example of bold, cross-disciplinary thinking. Through mathematics, argument, and imagination, Schrodinger reshaped how the twentieth century conceived matter, life, and the limits of knowledge.

Our collection contains 10 quotes who is written by Erwin, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Deep - Science - Honesty & Integrity - Learning from Mistakes.