Erwin Schrödinger Timeline

In 1920, Schrödinger became an assistant to Max Wien at the University of Jena, and in September attained the position of ausserordentlicher Professor (associate professor) at the University of Stuttgart.

In January 1921, Schrödinger finished his first article on the framework of the Bohr–Sommerfeld quantization of the interaction of electrons, addressing some features of the spectra of the alkali metals.

In 1921, Schrödinger moved to the University of Zurich, where he began the work on atomic spectra that would lead to his most famous discoveries.

In January 1926, Schrödinger published in Annalen der Physik the paper 'Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem' (Quantization as an Eigenvalue Problem) on wave mechanics, presenting what is now known as the Schrödinger equation. The paper has been universally celebrated as one of the most important achievements of the twentieth century, revolutionizing quantum mechanics and all of physics and chemistry.

Image source: Schrödinger equation

In 1927, Schrödinger succeeded Max Planck at the University of Berlin, one of the most prestigious positions in German physics.

Image source: Humboldt University of Berlin

In 1933, Schrödinger decided to leave Germany because he strongly disapproved of the Nazis' antisemitism.

Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac 'for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory'.

Image source: Nobel Prize in Physics

In 1934, Schrödinger lectured at Princeton University; although he was offered a permanent position there, he did not accept it.

Image source: Princeton University

In the midst of tenure issues in 1935, after extensive correspondence with Albert Einstein, Schrödinger proposed what is now called the 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment, illustrating apparent paradoxes of quantum superposition applied to everyday objects.

Image source: Schrödinger's cat

Building on the EPR paradox paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, Schrödinger published a 1935 paper that codified the concept of quantum entanglement, coining the term itself.

Image source: Quantum entanglement

After visa delays ended a prospective position at the University of Edinburgh, Schrödinger took up a position at the University of Graz in 1936, where he remained until 1938.

Image source: University of Graz

After the Anschluss (German annexation of Austria) in 1938, Schrödinger had problems in Graz because of his flight from Germany in 1933 and his known opposition to Nazism.

Image source: Anschluss

In 1939, Schrödinger received a personal invitation from Éamon de Valera, Ireland's Taoiseach, to reside in Dublin. In October 1939, his household—including his wife and Hildegunde March—took up residence in Dublin.

Image source: Éamon de Valera

In 1940, Schrödinger joined the newly-established Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies as Director of the School of Theoretical Physics, a position he held until his retirement in 1955.

Image source: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

In 1943, Schrödinger gave a series of three major lectures at Trinity College Dublin which remain highly influential at the university.

Image source: Trinity College Dublin

In 1944, Schrödinger wrote What Is Life?, which contains a discussion of negentropy and the concept of a complex molecule carrying the genetic code for living organisms. According to Watson's memoir DNA, the Secret of Life, the book inspired Watson to research the gene, leading to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure in 1953.

Image source: What Is Life

In 1947, Schrödinger announced a result, 'Affine Field Theory', in a talk at the Royal Irish Academy, but Einstein criticized the announcement as 'preliminary' and it failed to lead to the desired unified theory.

Image source: Unified field theory

In 1950, Cambridge University Press published Space-Time Structure, one of Schrödinger's later works on general relativity and unified field approaches (ISBN 978-0-521-31520-3).

Image source: Spacetime

In 1952, Schrödinger suggested that the different terms of a superposition evolving under the Schrödinger equation are 'not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously', an early articulation of ideas central to many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Image source: Superposition principle

Schrödinger retired in 1955 from his long-term position as Director of the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, where he had remained since fleeing the Nazis in 1938.

A manuscript 'Fragment from an unpublished dialogue of Galileo' resurfaced at The King's Hospital boarding school, Dublin, after being written for the school's 1955 edition of their Blue Coat, Schrödinger's last year in Dublin.

Image source: The King's Hospital

In his 1956 lecture 'Mind and Matter', Schrödinger said that 'The world extended in space and time is but our representation,' repeating the first words of Schopenhauer's main work.

In 1956, following the neutralization of Austria in 1955, Schrödinger returned to Vienna to become a professor emeritus at the University of Vienna.

Image source: University of Vienna