Erwin Schrödinger is a Nobel prize winner from Vienna, Austria. He was born on August 12, 1887. He died on January 4th, 1961. He is a professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna. He was also a professor in Zurich, these years that he spent in Zurich would probably be the most important year of his career. Erwin was a talented man with a broad education. He studied mainly in Chemistry, Quantum Mechanics. And after he finished his studies in Chemistry, he moved on to Italian painting as well as botany, which is a type of scientific study that focuses in physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance of plants. In addition, he looked into the ancient grammar of languages as well as German poetries.
From 1906 to 1910, he studied at University of Vienna. During these years of his studies at University, he got a mastery of eigenvalue problems in the continuous media of Physics, which he did really good work in. During his lifetime he studied multiple types of things. He wrote papers on all types of topics, one of them being problems of thermodynamics.
When Erwin was a professor in Zurich. He had a huge interest in physics research. He came upon the work of a partner physicist, named Louis de Broglie in 1925. In the year of 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed a theory of wave mechanics. So in the year of 1925, that idea made Erwin started to take interest in explaining that an electron in an atom would move just like a wave. During the first half of the year 1926. Erwin made his great discovery, the Schrödinger Wave equation. Erwin followed Bohr’s Orbit Theory of atoms. Erwin thinks that the theory and the beliefs about the atomic spectra should be determined by eigenvalue problems. The theory stated, electrons absorb and created radiations of fixed wavelengths during its movement of the fixed orbit around a nucleus. This would be a good statement for the spectrum created by the atom hydrogen. But this theory should be improved in order to support the more complicated atoms and molecules. In 1926, Erwin formulated this equation that’d be able to accurately calculate the energy levels of electrons in an atom. Assume that all matter, for example, electrons could be seen as both particles or waves.
During the year of 1913, Neils Bohr created a model of an atom. His theory was that the electrons are arranged in concentric circular orbits around the nucleus. This model shows the pattern of the solar system and this is known as the planetary model. The Bohr model can be explained by the following four ideas. First, electron occupies only certain orbits around the nucleus. Those orbits are stable, which is called stationary orbits; Second, each orbit has an energy related with it. The orbit that is closest to the nucleus has an energy of E1, the next orbit is E2, etc.; Third, energy is absorbed when an electron jumps from low to high orbit and energy is created when an electron falls from a high orbit to a lower one; Last, the energy and frequency of light created or taken can be calculated by using the difference between the two orbital energies.
The model is shown below :
In 1926, Erwin Schrödinger took this model one step further. Erwin used mathematical equations to describe the chances of finding an electron in an exact position. This atomic model is known as the quantum mechanical model. The difference between this model and Bohr’s model, the quantum mechanical model does not explain the exact path of an electron. This model can be shown as a nucleus surrounded by an electron cloud. Wherever the cloud is most dense, the chances of finding the electron is greater, and the more hollow part the electron is less likely to be found.
Model is shown below :
