Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Erwin Schrödinger was a brilliant and charming Austrian, a great scientist, and a man with a passionate interest in people and ideas. In this, the first comprehensive biography of Schrödinger, Walter Moore draws upon recollections of Schrödinger's friends, family and colleagues, and on contemporary records, letters and diaries. Schrödinger's life is portrayed against the backdrop of Europe at a time of change and unrest. His best-known scientific work was the discovery of wave mechanics, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1933. However, Erwin was also an enthusiastic explorer of the ideas of Hindu mysticism, and in the mountains of his beloved Tyrol he sought a philosophic unity of Mind and Nature. Although not Jewish, he left his prestigious position at Berlin University as soon as the Nazis seized power. After a short time in Oxford he moved to Graz, but barely escaped from Austria after the Anschluss. He then helped Eamon de Valera establish an Institute for Advanced Studies in Dublin. It was here that he spent the happiest years of his life, and also where he wrote his most famous and influential book What is Life?, which attracted some of the brightest minds of his generation into molecular biology. Schrodinger enjoyed a close friendship with Einstein, and the two maintained a prolific correspondence all their lives. Schrödinger led a very intense life, both in his scientific research and in his personal life. Walter Moore has written a highly readable biography of this fascinating and complex man which will appeal not only to scientists but to anyone interested in the history of our times, and in the life and thought of one of the great men of twentieth-century science.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Family, childhood and youth
• 2 University of Vienna
• 3 Schrödinger at war
• 4 From Vienna to Zurich
• 5 Zurich
• 6 Discovery of wave mechanics
• 7 Berlin
• 8 Exile in Oxford
• 9 Graz
• 10 Wartime Dublin
• 11 Postwar Dublin
• 12 Home to Vienna

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

An unusually thorough and competent scientific biography of one of the founders of 20th-century physical theory. Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian, was talented but pursued mostly minor scientific problems until, in his 40th year, he became interested in the idea that particulate matter might in some sense also be wave-like. In a series of beautiful papers produced in a very short time, he established the main equations and computational methods used in atomic and molecular physics today. The author chronicles Schrodinger's intellectual growth, his Bohemian way of life with its marriage of convenience and endless love affairs, and his relation, partly that of an outsider, with the main scientific circles of his time. There is enough mathematics in the book to make clear what Schrodinger was thinking about and what he accomplished, but for those who skip these passages there is an absorbing account of the social and scientific culture of Europe in the period after WWI. Highly recommended. -D. Park, Williams College