Great Physicists: Erwin Schrödinger, Founder of Quantum Mechanics and...

A short review of his greatest achievements - the well known contributions to quantum theory and the less known work in cosmology.

[onderozenc]

It is incredible that Schrodinger has formulated the universal gravitation this way. It is the very radius of the event horizon.

[TheMotorcycleMuse]

Received most of my physics education in the Schroedinger lecture theatre in Dublin. You possibly should have mentioned his contribution to genetic science. Watson and Crick recognized his work as the foundation for their research and eventual discovery of the double helix as far as I remember.

[d.k.barker]

Gotta love a guy who can break down the beauties and the mind-bending eccentricities of both physics and physicists and also use the word baloney in complete context. It seems that the direction of physics the last fifty years has been to try to bury the unresolved contradictions in nonfalsifiable baloney like infinite multiple universes.

[Gabriel-mfwh]

Dirac showed an equivalence between Schrodinger's and Heisenberg's picture, but what few people noticed was that the Heisenberg picture equations (which look much like Hamiltonian mechanics) are actually weaker than Schrodinger's equation. Even if you solve the equation for the evolution of position/momentum time-dependent operators A(t) in Heisenberg picture, you can't directly extract the wavefunction, thus the probability distribution of the position/momentum of the particle, from it. That's because when you apply the time-dependent operator on a initial state, say A(t)psi(0), what you get is not A(0)psi(t) (what you usually get in Schrodinger's picture when you apply an operator), but instead U*(t)A(0)psi(t) (i.e. the inverse of the time-evolution operator applied to it). So, to get Schrodinger's result, you need to apply U(t) to it, but that requires finding what U(t) concretely is, which exactly means finding a general solution to Schrodinger's equation. I.e., even if you solve the Heisenberg equations you'd need to solve Schrodinger's equation, so it is a weaker theory. That's why Schrodinger's picture is more fundamental

[concinnity]

I like how you told that he had the insight into wave equation while on holiday with his lover (7:20). This makes sense to me. As an EE micro-chip designer, I woke up one morning with a lover, and thought of a new way to construct Programmable Logic Arrays (PLAs) using CMOS elements (FETs). My evidence is empirical and anecdotal, but I suggest that sex enhances creativity.

[prasannapaithankar]

Sir the videos are amazing. Can we get a video on all the books u have. Greetings From India

[randykuhns]

Hearing you speak so candidly is like a breath of fresh cold mountain air.

[mathoph]

Schrodinger discovered the hydrogen equation but not only ! Every atomic equation, neglecting the exchange potential and very small relativistic effects. He discovered also the light emission with its transition current. He is for sure the big boss of QM, it is crazy the advance he had. Niels Borh have occulted his work with the Solvay congress.

[lugydxdone]

I hated Schrödinger for his Schrödinger cat thought experiment. Now I love him because it was mockery. What a man.

[haroldhawaiki]

Thank you so much for this beautiful epistemologic insight .
I had somewhat forgotten the crucial part of Cartan in relativity.
As for Erwin Schrödinger, he remains fascinating...

[arsd]

keep it coming Professor! awesome material!

[reframer]

Thanks for this new format of shortly introducing important physicists. I like it very much!
An interesting point to me was the fact, that Schrödinger did not believe in the probabalistic interpretation of the wave function. When I first heard about that in school years ago, I came very fast to the conclustion, that this sounds like a rediculous statement on the level of a fundamental theory. Until today my opinion on that did not change.
A funny anecdote I experienced, when I recently explained to a friend, who is not familiar with physics, that while measuring the physical state of a system, the wave function breakes down to a random (nearly) classic state and that it is (due to modern view) fundamentally not understandable, which state will appear. He startet laughing and said: "I just imagine a man coming home late to his wife. She is asking, where he has been and his answer is: This is fundamentally not understandable." xD I have found it interesting that also to people who are not involved to physics the probability interpretation sounds somehow unreliable.
My biggest criticism on the probability interpretation would be that the measurement process, that is supposed to be probaballistic, can in principle not be described by the equation of motion of the theory, since it is a deterministic equation. Therefore the theory is not complete/consistent. I cannot understand why no physicist today seams to care in any way on this huge problem within the consistency of this whole concept.
Well nearly no physicist ... it is calming to hear that at least the founders of the concept did care xD So thanks a lot for the video!:)

[itsbs]

What do you think Schrodinger's Wave Equation is waving?

He states in his paper that he is JUST using waves and has nothing to do with material point particles. It is CERTAIN that Schrodinger was not building a statistical/probabilistic equation. His equation gave good answers for the spectral line frequencies, intensities, and Stark Effect polarization (without ANY need to invoke a probability or statistical explanation).

[djelalhassan]

Erwin Schrödinger is my favorite Physicist

[Reidemeistermoves]

where's that qupte about 'Now they abuse my beautiful wave mechanics...' from? I tried googling it, but it turns out if you google 'Schrodinger' and 'abuse' in the same phrase you get some horrifyingly disgusting stuff.

[sonarbangla]

It is surprising how all of Unzicker's puzzles evaporate as soon as you accept quantized space and time, leading to the big bang and how the universe rebound (Carlo Rovelli, 2021), explained beautifully by string theory and Kaku claiming to explain everything, but the strings. Eastern mystics discovered thousand years ago, that there is no fundamental building block from which everything is made of.

[tufailabbas]

Is that G equation from Schodeinger somehow related to Friedman's Equation for k = 0. That is 2MGH = c^3
M = Mass of Universe.

[arthurrobey]

Would you mind dwelling on the equations, please. What are the variables?

[walterrau]

Where is Wolfgang Pauli in this opening pic???

[buckrogers]

You are right. History in physics is just as important. Subscribed!