Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Erwin Schrödinger

12 August 1887, Vienna – 4 January 1961, Vienna

After working as professor in Breslau, Jena and Zurich, the Viennese physicist Erwin Schrödinger accepted an appointment to Berliner Universität in 1927 and became Max Planck's successor in the chair of theoretical physics. Schrödinger is famous for wave mechanics, which he founded in 1926. He introduced the wave properties of electrons into the existing atomic models and developed a differential equation to describe the electrons in atoms: the Schrödinger Equation.

The co-founder of quantum mechanics resigned his position in Berlin in 1933 in protest against the Nazis and went to England. Immediately after his arrival in Oxford in October 1933, Schrödinger heard the news that the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics had been awarded to him and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac - in recognition of the discovery and application of new formulations of atomic theory.

Humboldt-Universität's information and communication centre on the Adlershof science campus is called Erwin Schrödinger Zentrum in his honour.