Erwin Schrödinger, The Nobel Prize in Physics 1933 (Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.)
My heart attack on December 29, 2021, and subsequent quadruple bypass surgery on January 4, 2022, meant that I could not get to my writing for many days. I have only now returned to something which has been a reflex action for me for over four decades.
I can resume with any theme since this is my personal blog. I do so with the disgusting and deeply dispiriting revelation that Erwin Schrödinger, the father of quantum physics, was a pedophile. He was not just a pedophile but someone who seemed to seriously think that his unquestionable genius somehow entitled him to that criminal and predatory behavior.
The Irish Times newspaper recently published a detailed account of Schrödinger’s sexual predation and serial abuse. In particular, two girls, aged 14 and 17 have been reported to have fallen prey to Schrödinger. The 17-year-old in fact was impregnated by him and later suffered a botched abortion. Schrödinger was in his mid-40s when he impregnated her.
It is a measure of his sick mind that he attempted to initiate a relationship with a 12-year-old girl. In his diary he wrote that it was “among the unrequited loves of his life.”
I had some awareness of Schrödinger’s propensities but the extent of it has become known only after the Irish Times investigation. There were disgusting attempts to minimize or downplay his pedophilia as “Lolita complex” which is nothing more than dressed up pedophilia.
The question I am grappling with is whether I should—really, we should—separate Schrödinger’s astounding genius from his abhorrent perversion. I must admit that my first impulse was to say no; we ought not to because human decency must take primacy over everything else in life, including the possibility or the ability to answer some of the most fundamental questions of the universe.
That still remains my default position, but I also wonder whether we should reject Schrödinger in his entirety, particularly his astonishing pioneering of quantum physics, on the basis of his pedophilia. I am leaning towards my original position that we must not separate the two. However, that is eventually a futile position because we have for decades enjoyed the benefits of what Schrödinger and others pioneered. The latest being advances in quantum computing.
The practical question is what form this rejection of Schrödinger should take. Should we stop using any application that may resulted from quantum physics and in some ways can be traced back to him? It seems like a silly thing to do. Once again, I am tempted to be that silly.
Having been invested in Schrödinger’s ideas for so long and having celebrated his genius, the revelation is a kick up my groin. It is almost as if I am taking it personally to the extent of erasing him from my thinking. It is silly, I know but, like I said, I tempted to be silly even if it changes absolutely nothing.
A lot of people may not know this but Schrödinger was so unconvinced about the quantum theory that he was believed to have said, “I don’t like it, and I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.”
In fact, his famously enduring thought experiment Schrödinger’s cat was his way to illustrate the absurdity of the quantum theory. Simply put an imaginary cat is put in an imaginary box which has an imaginary vial of poison. This is how he described it: “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The first atomic decay would have poisoned it. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naïvely accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.”
When I read it now, hovering over my mind is his pedophilia. I am not able to separate his genius from his perversion. The expression “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” comes to mind while thinking about Schrödinger. However, the idea that human decency must take primacy over everything else still wins.
P.S. : Here is a completely useless piece of trivia. My heart bypass surgery was on January 4, the 61st death anniversary of Schrödinger’s. Incidentally, I was born two days after his death on January 4, 1961. What's any of these got to do with anything? Nothing at all.