When Schrodinger was a student in Vienna, Adolf Hitler, “twice rejected as an art student [ref.1, p.5], [and] having pawned his overcoat to buy bread and milk, was prowling about the snowy streets ... trying to sell... pictures of Viennese churches...” [Ref.1, p.5]
That would be about 1911, when Erwin Schroedinger, born in 1889, would have been roughly 20.
Erwin was a much-indulged only child, top of his classes in high school and at the University of Vienna, possessing a genius that a few have said was nearer to madness than to normality [ibid p.4.]
A few months after his graduation he presented himself for his military service. As his biographer Walter Moore (whose book I quote from) states, 'as a young reserve officer life in garrison towns included happy evenings of wine, women and song' [ibid p.56].
After that he was given an assistantship at the University of Vienna, teaching labs, and wrote '… I realized I was not suited to be an experimentalist …' [p.58] For the man who is famous for the entirely theoretical Schrodinger equation, his first theoretical paper was presented to the Vienna Academy in 1912. He was then 23, and met his first love, 16 yr old Felicie Krauss, daughter of a wealthy family. When they wanted to become engaged, her mother stepped in and forbade the friendship to continue, because Erwin's financial prospects were close to zero.
WW1 began in 1914 and Erwin was sent to the Italian border as a young artillery officer. At times when there was little action he was able to make calculations in his dugout, and he sent [ibid p.82] his first short paper, on 'Capillary Pressure in Gas Bubbles', to Annalen der Physik.
Schrodinger, very much a romantic all his life, found happiness in many forms of beauty, in intellectual work, a few good friends, the love of women, philosophy, skiing, and exploration of mountains and seashores. [p.176] A poem he wrote beside Lake Zurich begins [ibid p.151]
The brooding sun rests softly on the lake And barely marks its shallow breathing As gentle waves rock up and down In the heavy glare of midday heat …
Some years after WW1, while steadily publishing, on color theory, and atomic theory, he was made a full Professor at Switzerland's U. of Zurich, where Einstein had been a professor before him. This gave him just enough money to marry – not Felicie, but Annemarie Bertel. Anny became an excellent homemaker but, after a couple of years, lost interest in him physically, becoming deeply attracted to another scientist, Paul Ewald. Nevertheless, she was proud to be the wife of a famous man, and they remained married for 40 years, but with no children.
Extreme poverty in Europe after the war, widespread starvation, the loss of his father, mother and beloved grandfather, caused him to write, before his lectures at Zurich could begin,“I am kaputt”. Suffering also from TB, he had a breakdown and was ordered to have complete rest. He and Anny went to Arosa, in the ?MOUNTAINS, where he soon wrote 2 more papers on specific heats.
Schrodinger was deeply interested in Hinduism, in the Upanishads in particular. After 42 publications in atomic theory, radiation theory, color and statistics he was invited to the chair at U. of Innsbruck, which would thus allow him to return to his beloved Austria. Anny became a lover of Hermann Weyl, but refused to divorce.
At Christmas in1925 he invited an old girlfriend, who according to the biographers has remained unknown, to join him in Arosa [foto p.195] while Anny remained in Zurich, being quite understanding of their own relationship. There, in the mountains, he began his world-shaking papers on wave mechanics. [ibid p.200]
Through Anny he was later introduced to two 14 yr old twins, with the delightful names of Ithi and Withi, [ibidp.223], to coach them in mathematics, and he would take them skiing; 3 yrs later he and Ithi became lovers, and Moore's biography includes a photograph of the beautiful Ithi. [foto, ibid p.254]
In 1927 Schrodinger was invited for a short visit to the U.of Wisconsin, where he soon heard he had been chosen to succeed Max Planck at the U. of Berlin, the top of European physics. From Berlin, he would meet the gentle and beautiful Ithi whenever possible on skiing holidays, and for 4 years they were on-and-off lovers. In 1932 Ithi came to the Schrodinger house, where she met both Planck and Einstein. Anny, who was away, accepted all of this, partly because her own marriage was not physical.
Anny's love affair with Weyl was also childless.
With the rise of the Nazis Schrodinger accepted a position at Oxford, and in 1933 it was announced he had won (with Dirac) the Nobel Prize. In later years he was a Professor in Dublin, where he wrote the book “What is Life?”
I'm out of time, but I hope to discuss “Schrodinger's cat” in a later essay.
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References:
1. “Schrodinger, Life and Thought”, by Walter Moore; Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK.
2. Some internet articles.
Dr. David Nightingale is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and is the co-author of the text, A Short Course in General Relativity.
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