Erwin Schrodinger — "There is no quantum jump. There is no such thing as a quantum jump. It is all ba…"
There is no quantum jump. There is no such thing as a quantum jump. It is all balderdash.
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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
Attributed, reflecting his initial resistance to certain aspects of quantum mechanics.
Date: Circa 1920s
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Schrödinger flatly rejects the idea that electrons instantly teleport between energy levels — the so-called quantum jump. He found the notion philosophically incoherent. In his view, quantum transitions are continuous wave processes, not abrupt discontinuous leaps. The word 'balderdash' signals contempt: he considered this a sloppy, unphysical concept invented to paper over a deeper misunderstanding of nature, one that his wave mechanics was specifically designed to replace.
Relevance to Erwin Schrodinger
Schrödinger invented wave mechanics in 1926 precisely to provide a continuous, deterministic alternative to Bohr's jump-based atom model. He had bitter disputes with Bohr and Heisenberg over the Copenhagen interpretation's embrace of discontinuity and probability. His wave equation describes quantum states as smoothly evolving functions — the opposite of a sudden leap. His famous cat paradox similarly attacked Copenhagen logic. Throughout his life he prioritized mathematical continuity and physical realism over statistical abstraction.
The era
In the 1920s–30s, physics fractured over quantum mechanics' meaning. Bohr's 1913 atomic model introduced quantum jumps; Heisenberg's 1925 matrix mechanics formalized discontinuity; Born's probability interpretation followed. A competing camp — Schrödinger, Einstein, de Broglie — resisted probabilistic and discontinuous physics. The Copenhagen interpretation won institutional dominance by the 1930s, leaving Schrödinger in a minority. The debate was more than academic: it concerned whether nature was fundamentally deterministic and continuous or irreducibly random and discrete.
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