Today’s Google logo marks the 126th birthday of Austrian physicist Erwin Schr�dinger. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 while at the University of Oxford in England, Schr�dinger is considered a founding father of quantum physics.
Google’s logo honors Schr�dinger by highlighting the physicist’s two most enduring legacies to quantum physics: the wave equation and Schr�dinger’s Cat. A fundamental theory of quantum mechanics, Schr�dinger’s wave equation demonstrates how the wave-function of a physical system evolves over time.
Schr�dinger’s Cat , a thought experiment that poses the question, “When does a quantum system stop existing as a superposition of states and become one or the other?” is a paradoxical theory�Schr�dinger used to criticize the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics brought forth by physicists Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and others.
Schr�dinger published several books on scientific theory including his well-known work of nonfiction What is Life? Beyond his Nobel Prize for Physics, he was awarded the Max Planck Medal in 1937 and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 1957. The Austrian Academy of Sciences founded the Erwin Schr�dinger Prize in 1956, giving the inaugural award to its namesake. Schr�dinger also has a large crater located on the dark side of the moon named for him.
After suffering from tuberculosis throughout his life, Schr�dinger died from the disease at the age of 73 in Vienna on January 4, 1961.
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