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Portrait of Erwin Schrödinger

Science · Physics

Erwin Schrödinger

1887–1961 · Austrian (also Irish citizen)

Quantum mechanics; theoretical physics

Erwin Schrödinger was the Austrian physicist who in 1926 formulated wave mechanics and the equation that bears his name, describing how the quantum state of a system evolves. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac. His 1935 "cat" thought experiment remains the most famous illustration of quantum paradox, and his 1944 book What Is Life? inspired a generation of molecular biologists.

How to spot them

  • ▸The Schrödinger equation and wave mechanics (1926)
  • ▸Schrödinger's cat, simultaneously alive and dead in a sealed box
  • ▸Book What Is Life? (1944), based on lectures in Dublin
  • ▸Shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with Paul Dirac
  • ▸Spent 1939–1956 at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Key discoveries & works

Wave equation describing how a quantum state evolves (1926)

Foundation of wave mechanics, published in a series of papers in Annalen der Physik

Cat-in-a-box thought experiment (1935)

Mocked superposition applied to everyday objects: a cat both alive and dead until observed

What Is Life? (1944)

Speculated that genes carry a code in an 'aperiodic crystal'; read by Watson and Crick

Proof that wave mechanics and matrix mechanics are equivalent (1926)

Showed his approach and Heisenberg's gave the same physics

Coining the term 'entanglement' (1935)

Named the quantum correlation (German Verschränkung) highlighted by the EPR paper

Key ideas

  • A quantum system is described by a wave function whose evolution is governed by a differential equation
  • Superposition taken to the macroscopic scale produces absurdities, the point of the cat paradox
  • Life can be understood physically: organisms feed on 'negative entropy'

Quick-fire facts

  • •Nobel Prize in Physics 1933, shared with Paul Dirac, 'for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory'
  • •Born and died in Vienna
  • •Succeeded Max Planck as professor of theoretical physics in Berlin in 1927, but left Germany in 1933 when the Nazis came to power
  • •Invited by Éamon de Valera to Dublin, where he worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies from 1939 to 1956
  • •What Is Life? grew out of public lectures at Trinity College Dublin in 1943
  • •His portrait appeared on the Austrian 1,000-schilling banknote

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources