ERWIN

SCHRODINGER
Albert Einsteins Contemporaries
ERWIN RUDOLF JOSEF ALEXANDER
SCHRDINGER
Born on August 12, 1887
Died on the age of 73, January 4, 1961
the only child of Rudolf Schrdinger, who was
married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his
Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of
Vienna.
IMPORTANT DETAILS

Unified Field Theory
Schrodingers Cat
Modern Atomic Theory
ERWIN RUDOLF JOSEF ALEXANDER
SCHRDINGER
Austrian scientist
He entered the University of Vienna in 1906 and
studied theoretical physics, such as Maxwell's
equations, thermodynamics, optics, and
mechanics.
He received his doctorate degree in 1910 and, after
a brief stint in the military, took a job working in
experimental physics.
This break from theoretical physics would prove
invaluable to his later work in theory because it
provided him with a practical backdrop for his
research.
Beginning around 1921, Schrdinger engaged in
studies of the nature of the atom.
He worked with quantum statistics in the mid-
1920s, and he was aware of the work of Louis de
Broglie.
Schrdinger began conversing with Albert Einstein
in 1925, and the two exchanged letters on the
subject of physics and contemporary scientists.
By 1926 Schrdinger had published new papers on
wave mechanics and was gaining worldwide fame.
He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933.
1940S
Schrdinger was starting to work actively on creating a unified field
theory
He published a paper on it in 1943, including the problem of unifying
gravitation and electromagnetism.
1944- He published his book What is Life
contains a discussion of negentropy and the concept of a
complex molecule with the genetic code for living organisms.
Negentropy- Negentropy is reverse entropy. It means things
becoming more in order.
Time in sciene is defined as the direction of entropy. This makes it
very hard to talk about ideas of time that would apply to negentropy
or its effects.
1946-Schrdinger corresponded with Einstein on the subject.
Although he never reached a conclusion of any significance, he
would continue this elusive quest for the remainder of his life.
MODERN ATOMIC THEORY
Erwin Schrodinger added the final piece to the puzzle
of electron arrangement around the nuclei of atoms. He
suggested that electrons behave in a wave-like manner rather
than just as particles and that their exact location within an
orbit could not be precisely calculated. Thisuncertainty
principle is complex and fascinating, but to understand the
behaviour of atoms in reactions we do not need to go into the
detail of it.
Schrodinger's view of the atom can be seen as "layers within
layers" in terms of the electron shells. While not an accurate
physical picture of what is happening with the electrons, it
does allow us to visually grasp an otherwise difficult concept.
Each electron shell is made up of a number of subshells. The
number of subshells in a shell is the same as the shell
number.
So the first shell has only one subshell. The second shell is
made of two subshells, the third by three and so on.
These subshells can be further subdivided into orbitals, and
each orbital is a distinct region of space that can contain a
maximum of two electrons. That will not be discussed here as
it is not necessary for understanding how electron structure
affects chemical bonding. We do, though, need a knowledge
of the filling order of the subshells.

SCHRODINGERS CAT
In the hypothetical experiment, which the physicist
devised in 1935, a cat is placed in a sealed box along
with a radioactive sample, a Geiger counter and a bottle
of poison.
If the Geiger counter detects that the radioactive
material has decayed, it will trigger the smashing of the
bottle of poison and the cat will be killed.
The experiment was designed to illustrate the flaws of
the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics,
which states that a particle exists in all states at once
until observed.
If the Copenhagen interpretation suggests the
radioactive material can have simultaneously decayed
and not decayed in the sealed environment, then it
follows the cat too is both alive and dead until the box is
opened.
[It] prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a
"blurred model" for representing reality,
Schrdinger wrote. In itself, this would not embody
anything unclear or contradictory.
Schrdingers Cat has been used to illustrate the
differences between emerging theories in quantum
mechanics, by testing how they would approach the
experiment.