Erwin Schrodinger — "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."
I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
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About Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961)
Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel for the wave equation that bears his name and the famous cat thought-experiment. Closely associated with Werner Heisenberg (matrix-mechanics rival who reached the same physics by different math) and Albert Einstein (his pen-pal on quantum interpretation). For an intellectual contrast, see Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and architect of the Copenhagen interpretation — Schrödinger's cat thought-experiment was specifically designed to ridicule Bohr's 'observer-dependent reality' reading of quantum mechanics — Schrödinger thought the Copenhagen interpretation was absurd; the cat was meant as reductio ad absurdum.
Details
Referring to the concept of quantum jumps and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Date: 1952
Self-DeprecatingVerification
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Understanding this quote
What it means
A frank expression of regret about one's own contributions. The speaker wishes they had never created or participated in something that took on a life they didn't intend. It captures the frustration of an inventor watching their work used in ways that contradict their original vision — a reminder that intellectual contributions cannot always be controlled once released into the world.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger developed wave mechanics in 1926, hoping to restore determinism to physics through continuous wave equations. But Born's probabilistic reinterpretation of his wave function, and the Copenhagen interpretation championed by Bohr and Heisenberg, transformed quantum mechanics into something fundamentally indeterministic. His cat thought experiment was a satirical protest, not a celebration. He spent decades arguing this distortion of his work was philosophically unacceptable.
The era
The late 1920s saw quantum mechanics crystallize around the Copenhagen interpretation at the 1927 Solvay Conference. Bohr, Heisenberg, and Born established probabilism and complementarity as orthodox physics, while Einstein and Schrödinger resisted. The 1935 EPR paradox and Schrödinger's cat were both published as attacks on this consensus. Physics was splitting between mathematical formalism and philosophical realism, a tension that defined 20th-century science.
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