When Schrödinger returned from his summer holidays for the winter semester of the academic year 1925/26, he would have been quite unaware that he was on the verge of an outburst of creative activity that would change forever the world of physics. He had just reviewed and codified his personal world view and it was unlikely that his philosophical outlook would change in any revolutionary way. He had set down his belief in Vedanta and thus in Schopenhauer, through whom the Kantian a priori categories of space and time had been refurbished. During five carefree years in Switzerland, he had been insulated from both the hypocrisy of Vienna and the brutality of German politics. It would not be surprising if Swiss society, with its deep roots in economic security, had made him more conservative in other ways. His more unconventional beliefs, he kept to himself, and neither his inaugural lecture nor My World View was published at this time. Hermann Weyl once said that Schrödinger ‘did his great work during a late erotic outburst in his life’. His marriage with Anny was at a high point of disagreement and tension, with constant talk of breakup and divorce. Their Zürich circle provided ample opportunities for amorous adventures, and if Erwin cared to venture outside the usual academic liaisons, both Weyl and Debye were available as competent guides to the uninhibited night life of the city. Before the breakthrough The semester began on October 15, and Schrödinger had his usual heavy teaching schedule, five hours a week on Theory of Electricity, two hours on Theory of Spectra, a weekly seminar for the electricity course, and the joint seminar with E.T.H., which met for two hours every fortnight. Pieter Debye suggested that Erwin should give a seminar talk on the de Broglie thesis, which had just been published in Annales de Physique .
When Schrödinger returned from his summer holidays for the winter semester of the academic year 1925/26, he would have been quite unaware that he was on the verge of an outburst of creative activity that would change forever the world of physics. He had just reviewed and codified his personal world view and it was unlikely that his philosophical outlook would change in any revolutionary way. He had set down his belief in Vedanta and thus in Schopenhauer, through whom the Kantian a priori categories of space and time had been refurbished. During five carefree years in Switzerland, he had been insulated from both the hypocrisy of Vienna and the brutality of German politics. It would not be surprising if Swiss society, with its deep roots in economic security, had made him more conservative in other ways. His more unconventional beliefs, he kept to himself, and neither his inaugural lecture nor My World View was published at this time. Hermann Weyl once said that Schrödinger ‘did his great work during a late erotic outburst in his life’. His marriage with Anny was at a high point of disagreement and tension, with constant talk of breakup and divorce. Their Zürich circle provided ample opportunities for amorous adventures, and if Erwin cared to venture outside the usual academic liaisons, both Weyl and Debye were available as competent guides to the uninhibited night life of the city. Before the breakthrough The semester began on October 15, and Schrödinger had his usual heavy teaching schedule, five hours a week on Theory of Electricity, two hours on Theory of Spectra, a weekly seminar for the electricity course, and the joint seminar with E.T.H., which met for two hours every fortnight. Pieter Debye suggested that Erwin should give a seminar talk on the de Broglie thesis, which had just been published in Annales de Physique .
When schrödinger returned from his summer holidays for the winter semester of the academic year 1925/26, he would have been quite unaware that he was on the verge of an outburst of creative activity that would change forever the world of physics. He had just reviewed and codified his personal world view and it was unlikely that his philosophical outlook would change in any revolutionary way. He had set down his belief in Vedanta and thus in Schopenhauer, through whom the Kantian a priori categories of space and time had been refurbished. During five carefree years in Switzerland, he had been insulated from both the hypocrisy of Vienna and the brutality of German politics. It would not be surprising if Swiss society, with its deep roots in economic security, had made him more conservative in other ways. His more unconventional beliefs, he kept to himself, and neither his inaugural lecture nor My World View was published at this time. Hermann Weyl once said that schrödinger ‘did his great work during a late erotic outburst in his life’. His marriage with Anny was at a high point of disagreement and tension, with constant talk of breakup and divorce. Their zürich circle provided ample opportunities for amorous adventures, and if Erwin cared to venture outside the usual academic liaisons, both Weyl and Debye were available as competent guides to the uninhibited night life of the city. Before the breakthrough The semester began on October 15, and schrödinger had his usual heavy teaching schedule, five hours a week on Theory of Electricity, two hours on Theory of Spectra, a weekly seminar for the electricity course, and the joint seminar with E.T.H., which met for two hours every fortnight. Pieter Debye suggested that Erwin should give a seminar talk on the de Broglie thesis, which had just been published in Annales de Physique .
When the Great War began in August, 1914, Erwin schrödinger at the age of twenty-seven was a Privatdozent at Vienna University, at the outset of a promising career in physics. He served throughout the war as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery, first on the Italian front and later assigned to the imperial meteorology department in Vienna. On October 7,1915, his revered professor of theoretical physics, Fritz Hasenöhrl, was killed by a grenade in an Italian attack on Mount Plaut in the South Tirol. Early in 1918, schrödinger received word that he was being seriously considered for the position of Professor Extraordinarius [associate professor] in theoretical physics at the University of Czernowitz. ‘I made up my mind to lecture there on honest theoretical physics, first of all according to the pattern of the splendid lectures of my beloved teacher Fritz Hasenöhrl, fallen in the war, but besides to concern myself with philosophy, deeply immersed as I then was in the writings of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Mach, Richard Semon, and Richard Avenarius. My good angel intervened, since soon Czernowitz no longer belonged to us. So nothing came of it. I had to stick to theoretical physics, and, to my astonishment, something occasionally emerged from it.’ Even on active duty, schrödinger found time to read deeply in philosophy, and indeed it was the only thing that kept him from despair during the long years of senseless killing and destruction. A serious interest in philosophy was not unusual among German and Austrian physicists, but with schrödinger at that time it was so important that he was even tempted to sacrifice scientific research to devote his life to philosophical study. Much later, in 1963, Max Born wrote: ‘I am convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.’ By his discovery of wave mechanics, Erwin schrödinger contributed in a major way to this revolutionary change in our view of the world [ Weltanschauunung ].
When the Great War began in August, 1914, Erwin Schrödinger at the age of twenty-seven was a Privatdozent at Vienna University, at the outset of a promising career in physics. He served throughout the war as a commissioned officer in the Austrian fortress artillery, first on the Italian front and later assigned to the imperial meteorology department in Vienna. On October 7, 1915, his revered professor of theoretical physics, Fritz Hasenöhrl, was killed by a grenade in an Italian attack on Mount Plaut in the South Tirol. Early in 1918, Schrödinger received word that he was being seriously considered for the position of Professor Extraordinarius [associate professor] in theoretical physics at the University of Czernowitz. ‘I made up my mind to lecture there on honest theoretical physics, first of all according to the pattern of the splendid lectures of my beloved teacher Fritz Hasenöhrl, fallen in the war, but besides to concern myself with philosophy, deeply immersed as I then was in the writings of Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Mach, Richard Semon, and Richard Avenarius. My good angel intervened, since soon Czernowitz no longer belonged to us. So nothing came of it. I had to stick to theoretical physics, and, to my astonishment, something occasionally emerged from it.’ Even on active duty, Schrödinger found time to read deeply in philosophy, and indeed it was the only thing that kept him from despair during the long years of senseless killing and destruction. A serious interest in philosophy was not unusual among German and Austrian physicists, but with Schrödinger at that time it was so important that he was eveny. Much later, in 1963, Max Born wrote: ‘I am convinced that theoretical physics is tempted to sacrifice scientific research to devote his life to philosophical stud actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.’
The two essays here published for the first time are separated by an interval of thirty-five years. The first and longer one was written shortly before my appointment as Max Planck's successor in Berlin, and a few months before the idea of what is now called wave mechanics began for a while to monopolise my whole interest; the second and shorter one dates from two years after my appointment as Professor Emeritus at the University of Vienna. The two are closely related in theme, and, of course, also connect with many ideas which I have publicly advocated in the intervening period. I do not know whether it is presumptuous of me to suppose that readers will be interested in ‘my’ view of the world. The critics, not myself, will decide on this. But a gesture of decorous modesty is usually in fact a disguise for arrogance. I should prefer not to be guilty of this. Anyway, the total (I have counted) is about twenty-eight to twenty-nine thousand words. Not an excessive size for a view of the world. There is one complaint which I shall not escape. Not a word is said here of acausality, wave mechanics, indeterminacy relations, complementarity, an expanding universe, continuous creation, etc. Why doesn't he talk about what he knows instead of trespassing on the professional philosopher's preserves? Ne sutor supra crepidam .
This book describes the many aspects of the life and scientific work of Erwin Schrödinger, who, perhaps more than anyone else, serves to represent the whole of modern physics. The contributions to the book are from many hands, and so it seemed useful to me to precede them with a short note giving an uncontroversial account of his life which will serve as a framework into which they can be fitted. Such a collection as this still leaves out many aspects of Schrödinger's thought, for it considers his philosophy only in passing, his poetry not at all and ignores his wide and deep interest in sculpture and painting and in the classics. Schrödinger was born in Vienna on August 12, 1887, and entered the University there to read physics in 1906. He worked there as an assistant from 1910 till his war service, and again after the war. Some short term appointments at Jena, Stuttgart and Breslau led up to his appointment to the chair of theoretical physics in Zürich in 1921. He was already treating a wide range of topics, but concentrating on atomic theory, for the old quantum theory had now entered on its heroic phase of final collapse. His six papers founding wave mechanics came at the end of his Zürich years, and in 1927 he went to the chair in Berlin, to remain there till the advent of Hitler in 1933.
Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) foi um físico austríaco, um grande cientista que viveu em um contexto europeu de mudança e turbulência, mas isso não o impediu de ter uma vida muito intensa, tanto em sua pesquisa científica quanto em sua vida pessoal. Seu trabalho mais famoso, publicado em 1926, inclui sua teoria da mecânica ondulatória, no qual consta a famosa equação que tem hoje o seu nome. Ele mostrou que a equação funcionava adequadamente para calcular os níveis de energia do átomo de hidrogênio. Em outros trabalhos, publicados no mesmo período, mostrou outras aplicações designadas ao oscilador harmônico e uma generalização para o caso dependente do tempo. Sua dedicação aos sistemas quânticos lhe rendeu o Prêmio Nobel em 1933. É sobre esse homem fascinante e complexo que se apresenta um recorte histórico com potencial para atrair não apenas os cientistas, mas qualquer pessoa interessada na história de nossos tempos, na vida e no pensamento de um dos maiores cientistas do século XX. O presente artigo nasceu do fato de que, embora muito se fale sobre Schrödinger, não há textos em língua portuguesa que ultrapassem os limites biográficos, apesar de sua extrema relevância teórica para a pesquisa acadêmica. Nesse sentido, tem-se por objetivo visitar algumas obras que relatam os acontecimentos ou fatos econômicos, políticos, sociais e culturais que resultaram no período mais produtivo da carreira de Schrödinger.A historical overview of Erwin Schrödinger’s contributions to Quantum MechanicsAbstractErwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) was an Austrian physicist, a great scientist who lived in a European context of change and turmoil, but this did not stop him from living a very intense life, both in his scientific research and in his personal life. His most famous work, published in 1926, includes his theory of wave mechanics, which contains the famous equation that bears his name today. He showed that the equation worked properly for calculating the energy levels of the hydrogen atom. In other works, published in the same period, he showed other applications assigned to the harmonic oscillator and a generalization for the time dependent case. His dedication to quantum systems won him the Nobel Prize in 1933. It is about this fascinating and complex man who presents a historical snippet with the potential to attract not only scientists, but anyone interested in the history of our times, life and thought from one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. This article was born from the fact that, although much is said about Schrödinger, there are no texts in Portuguese that go beyond biographical limits, despite its extreme theoretical relevance for academic research. In this sense, the objective is to visit some works that report the economic, political, social and cultural events or facts that resulted in the most productive period of Schrödinger's career.Keywords: Quantum mechanics; Schrödinger; History of Physics.