Erwin Schrödinger
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Erwin Schrödinger

Nobel laureate and repatriate

Schrödinger was raised in Vienna by a Catholic father and an Evangelical mother. After studying mathematics and physics he gained his habilitation at the University’s Physics Institute and worked there alongside Exner (relief 33) and Hasenöhrl (bust 77).

After the First World War he received appointments in Jena, Stuttgart and Breslau, was Professor of Theoretical Physics in Zürich, where Albert Einstein and Max Laue had formerly taught, and took over from Max Planck in Berlin. He became famous with the Schrödinger equation engraved here, which describes the spatial and temporal changes of a quantum system and served its author as an explanation of hydrogen spectra.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933 for proving the equivalence of wave mechanics and quantum mechanics. In the same year Schrödinger, a resolute opponent of the Nazis, left Berlin for England. He returned to Austria in 1936 but was forced to leave with the Anschluss two years later.

Schrödinger concerned himself further with the theory of colour and had a great influence on the emerging molecular biology by explaining biological topics with physics. Many of his numerous publications, with their thought experiments, became classics in terms of showing microphysical phenomena in a comprehensible way.

He is the only Nobel laureate driven away by the Nazis to return to Austria. Schrödinger taught at Vienna University again from 1956 until his death.

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