When he's not busy winning the Nobel prize for Physics and other physical activities (see below), Schrödinger loved to " ski, skate, swim, climb mountains." Schrödinger Wasn't Just All About Physics Regardless, Debye turned to Bloch and said, "Well, wasn't I right?"Ī physics post-doc once said to me that "there's no money in physics." That may be true, but there sure is physics in money! Behold, the Schrödinger Banknote, circa 1983.ģ. Debye claimed that he had forgotten, but Bloch thought that he was regretful that he goaded Schrödinger into working out the formula rather than doing it himself.
Years later, Bloch approached Debye and asked him about the encounter. After, uh, rigorously "consulting" with the girlfriend for inspiration, Schrödinger shoved the pearls into his ears to get himself some peace and quiet, and set to work on wave mechanics.īy the next talk, Schrödinger said, "My colleague Debye suggested that one should have a wave equation well, I have found one!" He took only de Broglie's thesis, an old Viennese girlfriend (whose identity remains a mystery until today), and two pearls. Schrödinger thought about it and soon after left his wife for a two-and-a-half-week vacation at a villa in the Swiss Alps. He gave a talk about how French physicist Louis de Broglie postulated that matter also has wave properties, but Debye dismissed the talk as "childish," pointing out that "to deal properly with waves, one had to have a wave equation." Why don't you tell us some time about that thesis of de Broglie, which seems to have attracted some attention."Īnd so Schrödinger did.
Swiss physicist Felix Bloch recounted the story of how wave mechanics came to be: One day, Nobel laureate Peter Debye said, "Schrödinger, you are not working right now on very important problems anyway. The Challenge That Caused Schrödinger to Figure out Wave Mechanics Here are some of the neatest facts about Erwin Schrödinger. But how much do you actually know about the man behind the famous paradox? We bet that whenever you hear the word "Schrödinger," you immediately think of Schrödinger's Cat. So, today is Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger's 136th birthday and Google celebrated with with a clever Schrödinger's Google Doodle:
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