Erwin Schrodinger was a famous Austrian physicist. He is known as the father of quantum physics. His research was instrumental in the modern understanding of quantum theory. He established the wave mechanics formulation of quantum mechanics.
He was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, Austria. His father Rudolf Schrodinger was a botanist. Erwin was the only child of his parents. He belonged to a religious household and his parents were Protestants but he was atheist from an early age.
Quick Facts: –
- Erwin attended the University of Vienna in 1906, and got his doctorate in 1910 with the thesis ‘On the conduction of electricity on the surface of insulators in moist air’.
- He became an assistant to Max Wien in 1920 before accepting an associate professorship in Stuttgart.
- In 1927 he became Max Planck’s successor at the University of Berlin. He remained there till 1933.
- He received the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics together with Paul Dirac for the formulation of the Schrodinger equation.
- In 1933, Erwin started his fellowship at Oxford University and remained there till 1936.
- He authored ‘What is Life’ in which the concepts of negentropy and complex molecule have been explained.
- He wrote many other books in numerous fields of physics like thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, color theory, cosmology, and general relativity.
- During the First World War, Erwin Schrodinger served as an artillery officer.
- He received advanced degrees and habilitation from several prestigious university programs.
