Who was Schroedinger?

Google very kindly told me it was Erwin Schroedinger’s 126th birthday, well, the anniversary of his birth as he died in 1961. I guess most people know him because of his cat… not his personal cat (did he have one?) but his use of the idea of a cat in a thought experiment.

It is all a bit beyond me, although I’m imaginative I find philosophy difficult and these sort of theoretical problems virtually impossible. His theory is something about a cat being contained with a something which is radioactive… and the question is whether the cat alive after an hour, or is it alive and dead… actually, I’m not sure whether that is what it’s really about, but its something about a cat and a box and radioactivity… I think… well, there is plenty of information out there for those who are interested. From it there came many more theories including the Copenhagen Interpretation (if anyone knows the radio programme ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, this sounds like a rule from the game Mornington Crescent!)

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was born in Austria and later became an Irish citizen; he was a correspondent of Albert Einstein and it was this correspondence which led to the cat. Having worked in several European countries, he left Germany because of the rise of Nazism and moved to Ireland where he lived and worked for many years. After the war he returned to Austria and lived there for the rest of his life. Although he had many interests in his working life, (including genetics, the philosophical aspects of science, ancient and oriental philosophical concepts, ethics and religion, philosophy and theoretical biology) he is revered as the father of quantum physics it is his cat which most ordinary people remember.