Erwin Schrödinger
Developed wave equation for quantum mechanics
Most quoted
"One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. Imagine an experiment that will not be carried out until the year 2000, in which a cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): at the heart of a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts."
— from Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik, 1935
"The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really close to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good and bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously."
— from Mind and Matter
"This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in a single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula. Tat tvam asi—this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, above and below, I am this entire world.’"
— from My View of the World
All quotes by Erwin Schrödinger (550)
It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of 'equilibrium' that an organism appears so enigmatic.
What we call physical conditions are in general complications of a very simple structure.
The living cell is a thermodynamic system.
The second law of thermodynamics applies to the living organism.
The device which mediates between the two is the same as in the case of the living organism.
The sun's rays are the source of all our power.
The process by which the sun pours out its energy is a process of degradation of energy.
The living organism keeps at a low temperature.
The cell is a factory.
The chromosome structures are largely made up of proteins.
Proteins are formed by chains of amino acids.
The code-script of the gene is more like a Morse code than a language.
The chromosome thread is packed with genes like beads on a string.
The number of genes in a cell is of the order of thousands.
The gene has a radiation chemistry of its own.
Mutations are caused by radiation.
The gene is a giant molecule.
The arrangement of atoms inside the gene is the code.
It is one of the elementary lessons of life that it is easier to build a straw house than a house of bricks.
The delight at the poetic picture of the living being is well-founded.
Contemporaries of Erwin Schrödinger
Other Physicss born within 50 years of Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961).