If you ask a theoretical physicist today, ‘What is an electron?’ he will probably say, ‘It is a symbol in the wave equation.’ We have got so far from the concrete picture of nature.
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"The great task of science is to unify all knowledge."
"There is no quantum jump. There is no such thing as a quantum jump. It is all balderdash."
"The number of children born to a marriage ought to be limited, and that a man who has already had some children should be sterilized."
"If you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it well enough."
"The world is not something that exists independently of us. It is something that we create."
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.
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Modern physics has drifted so far into abstraction that fundamental particles like electrons are no longer described as tangible things but as mathematical constructs. Scientists can calculate electron behavior precisely yet cannot say what an electron actually is in physical reality. The tools of description have replaced genuine understanding of nature itself.
Schrodinger pioneered wave mechanics in 1926, literally giving electrons their wave equation. His dissatisfaction with pure mathematical abstraction drove his famous cat paradox—a protest against Copenhagen interpretation's refusal to describe physical reality. He believed physics must ultimately connect to concrete experience, not dissolve into symbols divorced from the observable world.
Mid-20th century physics was dominated by Copenhagen interpretation orthodoxy, where Bohr and Heisenberg insisted quantum mathematics needed no physical picture underneath. The atomic age had produced nuclear weapons and transistors through purely mathematical frameworks, making abstraction seem triumphant. Schrodinger represented a dissenting classical tradition demanding physics retain genuine ontological meaning beyond predictive equations.
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