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Monday, December 05, 2011

Advent calendar #5: Share the love

In 1933, Erwin Schrödinger moved to Oxford. The physicist Arthur March, best known for his (failed) attempt to give physical meaning to a Lorentz-invariant minimal length scale, was not only Schrödinger's colleague but also a close friend. Due to Schrödinger's initiative, March too got a position in Oxford. Summer 1933, on a vacation in Tyrol, Schrödinger went on a bike excursion with Arthur March's wife Hilde. Nine months later Hilde gave birth to Schrödinger's daughter. Arthur March did not seem to mind much, but Schrödinger's wife went on to have an affair with the mathematician Hermann Weyl, while Weyl's wife in return found comfort with the physicist Paul Scherrer.

This and other details of Schrödinger's illustrious life can be found in Walter Moore's biography Schrödinger: Life and Thought.

8 comments:

  1. The wild life of physicists :-)

    Best, Kay

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  2. This is retro-gossiping, not sharing anecdotes in the purest of seasons.

    ;-)

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  3. So what are YOU doing tonight, Bee?
    ;-)

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  4. It seems I'm trying to organize a workshop while wiping baby puke off my shirt. So much about my glamorous nightlife ;o)

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  5. From now on I could never see again the Schrodinger equation with the same innocent eye. These orgies will pop up in my mind every time.

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  6. :o) This is actually not even half of the story. Schrödinger had some more lovers (and some more daughters)...

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  7. Hi Bee,

    Very interesting and yet perplexing, that is why Schrödinger had such trouble with entanglement while at the same time being living proof of its natural existence; just another example of the mystery surrounding superposition I suppose.

    Best,

    Phil

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  8. Hi Bee,


    “It seems I'm trying to organize a workshop while wiping baby puke off my shirt. So much about my glamorous nightlife”

    Actually I think it rather simply strengthens the argument regarding the need to maintain causality despite entanglement being an undeniable aspect of nature ;-)

    Best,

    Phil

    ReplyDelete

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