Erwin Schrödinger
1887–1961, Vienna, Austria, Vienna, Austria
Austrian physicist who proposed the wave equation bearing his name, one of the two foundational formalisms of quantum mechanics.
Inspired by Louis de Broglie's matter-wave idea, Schrödinger developed a wave equation for the electron in the atom in 1926, independently of but mathematically equivalent to Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. Schrödinger is also famous for the 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment (1935), illustrating paradoxes in interpreting quantum mechanics at the macroscopic scale.
Nobel-winning work
Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Dirac 'for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory'. In a series of 1926 papers he introduced the wave equation Ĥψ = Eψ that bears his name, treating particles as de Broglie waves confined in potential wells. Wave mechanics yielded the hydrogen spectrum, the quantum harmonic oscillator and tunneling, and was soon proved equivalent to matrix mechanics.
Workplaces: University of Zurich, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
Austria