Erwin Schrödinger (1887

Hear Their Voice

Original recordings and AI voice

Original Speech

"YouTube search fallback (batch 49)" —

AI Voice Clone

Generated by Today in History

Talk to Erwin Schrödinger

Have a conversation with this historical figure through AI

→

Biography

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger, sometimes written as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, 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."

Timeline

The story of Erwin Schrödinger, told in moments.

1926 Event

At 38, during a Christmas holiday at a Swiss ski lodge with a woman who wasn't his wife, he produces the wave equation that bears his name. It describes how quantum particles behave over time. He publishes four papers in six months that rewrite physics.

The wave equation at a ski lodge with another man's wife. Was chaos productive? Four papers in six months. Were you racing against someone?

1933 Event

Wins the Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac for "the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory." He immediately leaves Germany, repelled by the Nazis. Lands at Oxford, but his living arrangement with both his wife and his mistress causes a scandal. He moves on.

Nobel Prize, then immediately fleeing Germany. Was the timing poetic? Your living arrangement causing scandal at Oxford. Did you care?

1935 Event

Publishes his famous thought experiment: a cat in a box with a quantum-triggered vial of poison is simultaneously alive and dead until someone opens the lid. He means it as a critique of quantum mechanics, not an endorsement. The cat outlives the criticism.

The cat in the box. Did you expect it to outlive the physics? You meant it as a critique. Does it frustrate you that people miss that?

1944 Life

Publishes What Is Life?, a short book arguing that living organisms must store genetic information in an "aperiodic crystal." Francis Crick and James Watson both cite it as the book that led them to discover DNA's structure.

Crick and Watson both credit your book. Did that surprise you? An 'aperiodic crystal' for genetic information. How close did that feel?

1961 Death

Dies of tuberculosis in Vienna at 73. He'd returned from Dublin in 1956 to a chair at his old university. Buried in Alpbach, Austria. His gravestone bears his equation.

Blind for the last seven years. Did you still think in equations? Your gravestone bears your equation. Is that the right epitaph?

In Their Own Words (20)

The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession] (2) Wissen [Knowledge] (3) Können [Ability] (4) Sein [Being]

Writings of August 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore, 1994

No self is of itself alone. It has a long chain of intellectual ancestors. The "I" is chained to ancestry by many factors … This is not mere allegory, but an eternal memory.

Writings of July 1918, quoted in A Life of Erwin Schrödinger (1994) by Walter Moore, 1994

If we were bees, ants, or Lacedaemonian warriors, to whom personal fear does not exist and cowardice is the most shameful thing in the world, warring would go on forever. But luckily we are only men — and cowards.

1958

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. The barrier between them cannot be said to have broken down as a result of recent experience in the physical sciences, for this barrier does not exist.

1958

Matter and energy seem granular in structure, and so does "life", but not so mind.

1958