Schrodinger: Difference between revisions

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He did, however, publish a novel idea, in which he compared his Schrodinger equation to the diffusion equation for Brownian motion with an imaginary diffusion coefficient. In the present day, this suggestion has been turned into a very powerful "Diffusion Monte Carlo" algorithm, as the diffusion equatiton can be solved with a simple random walk procedure, which is very easy to apply on modern electronic computers. This approach is enabling the Schrodinger equation to be solved numerically for quite complicated multi-dimensional systems, which are hard to tackle with alternative approaches.
 
=== Academy of Science ===
The Prussian Academy of Sciences was a highly prestigious scientific society based in Berlin. There were just five physicists in the academy in 1929 : Planck, Einstein, von Laue, Warburg and Paschen. Schrodinger was elected that year and was the youngest member aged 42. It was expected that members would write papers for the academy. Schrodinger published two papers in 1930 on Heisenberg's uncertainty relations and on relativistic wave mechanics. The Acadmy would come to play an important role in the political storm that would soon overwhelm German science.
 
In 1931 Schrodinger was delighted to be elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He was well aware of the many distinguished mathematicians and theoretical physisicsts who had come from Ireland including George Boole, William Hamilton, Joseph Larmor, George Stokes and Lord Kelvin. Schrodinger equation built on the work of Hamilton. He often found that the distinguished academies he was elected to would be useful to him in his subsequent career.
 
=== World War II ===