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In this way, Schrodinger won the Nobel Prize as a Fellow of Magdalen for just a few hours.
=== Nobel Prize ===
Ever since the creation of these prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology - Medicine, Literature and Peace by Alfred Nobel in his will of 1896, they have captured the imagination of the scientific community and the public around the world. In Physics, the Nobel Prize is given to the person who made "the most important discovery or invention" in the field. Being awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and presented in a lavish ceremony by the King of Sweden, the Nobel Prizes have a special independence and kudos. Indeed, once a scientist has won the Nobel Prize, it puts them above other scientists in the public eye. Schrodinger would have been well aware that many of the physicists he had interacted with had already won the Nobel Prize in Physics. This includes Lorentz, the Braggs and Curies, Lenard, Thomson, Wien, von Laue, Planck, Stark, Einstein, Bohr, Millikan, Franck, Hertz, Compton, Richardson, de Broglie and Raman. However, at that time, ther had been no prize awarded for the new quantum mechanics.
In the preliminaries, the Chair of the award committee writes to previous prize winners asking for their opinon on who is most deserving of the award. In addition, they write to other notable scientists such as presidents of academies, or heads of major departments in the subject of the award. The committee always looks to see who wrote the very first papers that led to a "most important discovery or invention", in the words of Nobel.
In a letter to the Committee of 25 September 1928, Einstein had already mentioned Schrodinger as deserving of the Prize, although he considered de Broglie to have precedence. Later, De Broglie was actually awarded the Prize in 1929. Then once again, Einstein mentioned Schrodinger in his letter to Nobel Committe dated 30 September 1931.
<blockquote>
I nominate the founder of wave or quantum mechanics : E. Schrodinger of Berlin and W. Heisenberg of Leipzig. In my opinion, this theory contains without doubt a piece of the ultimate truth. The achievements of both men are independent of each other and so significant that it would not be appropriate to divide a Nobel Prize between them.
</blockquote>
However, the Nobel Committee was hesitating as a new discovery or invention arising from the theory was needed under the strict interpretation of Nobel's will. While wave mechanics could explain the spectrum of the hydrogen atom, Heisenberg had actually used his theory to predict in 1927 that the ortho form of the hydrogen molecule (with parallel nuclear spins) would be three times more abundant than the para form (with opposite nuclear spins). This was experimentally verified in 1929 by Harteck and Bonhoeffer. It provided clear evidence of a new discovery arising from a quantum mechanical prediction. Furthermore, Niels Bohr had placed Heisenberg first preference, with Schrodinger second.
Meanwhile, by 1933, many predictions of the specra for diatomic molecules had been made by Mulliken, Hund, Lennard-Jones and others using a molecular orbital theory based on Schrodinger's wave mechanics. Several of these predictions had been verified experimentally. Therefore, the Nobel Committe was anticipating giving the prize for 1932, retrospectively, to Heisenberg, and that for 1933 to Schrodinger.
However, a startling development was made in an observation using a cloud chamber by Carl Anderson a Caltech of the positron. This new particle had been predicted previously by Paul Dirac with his own relativistic form of quantum mechanics. Dirac had only three nominations for the Nobel Prize, although one was from the influential William H. Bragg. That was enough.
As Heisenberg's first paper (1925) had preceded Schrodinger's, the Nobel Committee decided to give the 1932 Prize to Heisenberg while splitting the prize for 1933 equally between Schrodinger and Dirac. During the selection process in 1932, the Nobel Committee for Physics decided that none of the year’s nominations met the criteria as outlined in the will of Alfred Nobel. According to the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the Nobel Prize can in such a case be reserved until the following year. Therefore, both the 1932 and 1933 prizes were announced that year.
The Nobel Awards Committee for Physics made its final recommendation on 23 September 1933. Rumours on the decision then started to spread. The recommendation from the committee needed to be approved at the meeting of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences before any official announcement could be made. Finally, on 9 November 1933, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences had met and decided formally to award the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics to Werner Heisenberg "for the creation of quantum mechanics, the application of which has, inter alia, led to the discovery of the allotropic forms of hydrogen" and the 1933 Prize jointly to Erwin Schrodinger and Paul Dirac for "the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory".
== Wave Mechanics ==
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