What first attracted you to physics? As a child I read a lot of popular-science magazines, and was fascinated by relativity and images of distorted space-time. Later I became especially interested in quantum mechanics and how it shatters the things we take for granted, such as locality and causality. I planned to study painting at the art academy in Berlin, but in a philosophy class I took at the Free University I came across Roger Penrose's brilliant The Emperor's New Mind, which helped me change my mind and take up physics instead of art.
What first attracted you to physics? As a child I read a lot of popular-science magazines, and was fascinated by relativity and images of distorted space-time. Later I became especially interested in quantum mechanics and how it shatters the things we take for granted, such as locality and causality. I planned to study painting at the art academy in Berlin, but in a philosophy class I took at the Free University I came across Roger Penrose's brilliant The Emperor's New Mind, which helped me change my mind and take up physics instead of art.
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.’
Not long ago I was invited to dinner to meet a young artist who, I was told, had recently developed a strong interest in physics, especially in the physics of elementary particles my own field of research. Ever eager to bridge the yawning crevasse that, it appears, separates the two cultures coupled with the prospect of an excellent meal I accepted at once. Upon my arrival, it turned out that the young man in question was accompanied by an attractive girlfriend and that she too had a burgeoning interest in the physics of elementary particles. This intriguing concidence, it developed, did not have its origin in any of the more recent discoveries in our discipline, but rather in a book they had read that, according to them, demonstrated that elementary particle physics provided a scientific basis for many of the revelations of Eastern mysticism. Could I, they wondered, enlighten them further on this remarkable development? Their faces, however, fell to half-mast when I confessed that (a) I had never heard of the source of their inspirationone Fritjof Capra and that (b) I had not read his chef d'oeuvre, The Tao of Physics, which, they assured me, was the book in which this reconciliation was detailed. They were further discomfited when I remarked that for the sake of Eastern mystic philosophy I hoped it wasn't true. In fact, I added, if I were a Tibetan monk or the swami in an ashram in New Delhi and if Fritjof Capra or anyone else came to my door clutching the latest copy of the Physical Review
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 ].
According to quantum physics, the world is fundamentally quite different than it seems. Drawing inspiration from the underlying nature of reality, former quantum physicist Julian Voss-Andreae created an image of a walking human as a quantum object. Made up of parallel sheets of steel, the sculpture is a metaphor for the counter-intuitive world of quantum physics. Symbolizing the dual nature of matter with the appearance of classical reality on the surface and cloudy quantum behavior underneath, the sculpture seems to consist of solid steel when seen from the front, but dissolves into almost nothing when seen from the side.
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.