Schrodinger: Difference between revisions

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{{In creation}}
 
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Schrodinger was born in Austria in 1887 and was educated in Vienna.
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Professor Erwin Schrodinger has been appointed by the Fondation Francqui as a Visiting Professor for the next six months to a "Chaire Francqui" in the University of Ghent. His address is Laboratory of Physics, Plateaustraat 22, Gand, Belgium.
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=== Moving to Ireland ===
The summer of 1939 was a very tense time for the whole of Europe. Schrodinger was waiting more and more anxiously for the call to come to Dublin. On 1 September, German troops invaded Poland and on 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany. At that time, Belgium was remaining neutral, but it was very vulnerable and had a border with Germany. Schrodinger still had German nationality that once caused a difficulty with the authorities in Belgium. With the announcement of war, de Valera realised he had to act very quickly. He informed Schrodinger he should come to Dublin as soon as possible, even though his Institute for Advanced Studies had not yet been approved by the Irish Parliament. A temporary professorship was being arranged for him.
 
De Valera's promise to assist with travel permits and visas came through. Schrodinger left Belgium on 4 October 1939. First taking a ferry from Ostend to Dover. After arriving in England, the Schrodinger party then travelled to London, leaving from there at 9 pm to Liverpool, going on to Holyhead in Wales and then taking another boat at 4 am to Dublin.
 
Upon his arrival in Ireland, Schrodinger was being funded on a temporary basis by University College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy. Irish politics, was volatile. De Valera could easily have lost his position of Taoiseach and his proposed Institute for Advanced Studies. Nevertheless, Schrodinger's reception in Dublin was much more enthusiastic than he had been the case in Oxford. In Dublin, he was an academic superstar who was head and shoulders above other academics in the country in terms of his international repuation.
 
He had developed a popular style of lecturing in almost perfect English and in general terms with no mathematics. He was invited to give many public lectures which were enthusiastically received, advertised and reported in the national Irish press. The Irish Independent on 4 November 1939 reported :
 
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Prof. Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel Prize Winner who formerly held an academic chair in Vienna and was just dismissed from his post by the Nazis, began a course of lectures on the latest form of the Quantum Theory at University College Dublin, yesterday.
 
The lecturer paid a tribute to the work of the late Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Astronomer Royal and former President of the Royal Irish Academy. He had been deeply impressed by his work, he said, long before he had come to Ireland.
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By 1940, the German army had invaded Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark. Chamberlain had resigned and Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister of Great Britain. The situation was getting critical just over the Irish Sea. Meanwhile, the bill to create the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies was finally passed by the Irish Parliament on 19 June 1940. The first appointment to be made was Professor Erwin Schrodinger as Senior Professor in the School of Physics. He was also appointed to the Council of the Institute for Advanced Studies. So finally Schrodinger had his permanent appointment in a safe place away from the war ravaging close by in Europe. The annual salary was £1,200. This allowed him to cover the living expenses for himself and his family in reasonable comfort.
 
After a succession of nine moves in 20 years with appointments in Jena, Stuttgart, Breslau, Zurich, Berlin, Oxford, Graz, Ghent and Dublin, he did not anticipate that he would be living in Ireland for as long as 17 years. During his 17 years in Ireland, Schrodinger was hugely popular with the public and with the press. As time moved on, he chose more and more general title for his public lectures such as "What is Life", "Science at Play", and "Fun in Science". They were sell-outs. He had become the public face of science in Ireland. Every new prize, election to an academy, new appointment or Honorary Degree, was reported in complementary terms in the "Irish Press".
 
De Valera himself had founded the "Irish Press" newspaper, which always reported very positively on the Taoiseach and his colleagues. Accordingly, Schrodinger was regularly asked by the Irish Press to comment on almost any subject. Even when he went on cycling holidays, it was reported in the press. It seems that any movement he made or any comment he expressed was reported. There were non-sensational reports on his life at home with his family with no difficult questions asked. After the Second World War, he was also in regular demand to speak on highly serious topics such as the nuclear bomb, or how to deal with German or Austrian Nazis.
 
== Wave Mechanics ==