Erwin Schrodinger
The Austrian theoretical physicist Erwin Schrodinger, b. Aug. 12,
1887, d. Jan. 4, 1961, published (1926) four papers that laid the
foundation of the wave-mechanics approach to quantum theory and
set forth his now-famous wave equation.
Schrodinger earned a doctorate at the University of
Vienna in 1910. He succeeded (1927) Max Planck in the chair of
theoretical physics at the University of Berlin but left Germany
in 1933 because of Nazi threats--the same year he shared the
Nobel Prize for physics with Paul Dirac for his contributions to
atomic theory. In 1939 he joined the newly formed Institute for
Advanced Studies in Dublin. There he continued his studies of
the application and statistical interpretation of wave mechanics,
the mathematical character of the new statistics, and the
relationship of this statistics to statistical thermodynamics.
He also worked on problems of general relativity and cosmology
and on a unified field theory. Late in his life Schrodinger
studied the foundations of physics and their implications for
philosophy.
