Trechos de Schrödinger: Life And Thought (1992), de Walter Moore.
[...] slow acoustic waves can be considered without references to effect due to rapid thermal motions of the individual atoms.
This paper is undoubtedly the most interesting of all written by [Erwin] Schrödinger before he was called into military service in 1914.
- - -
RESEARCH IN UNIFORM
During the first months of the war Erwin was able to complete some scientific work. The advantage of being a theoretician was that he could make calculations even in a dugout, although he missed the possibility of consulting the scientific journals. [...]
He had began some experimental measurements with wide-bore capillaries. He conclued by saying, "I intend to continue the measurements, which had to be interrupted at the end of July, so as to obtain more extensive data for testing the formula." Obviously he did not think that the war would continue four more years.
- - -
Erwin's next assignment was to Franzenteste, a fortress just north of Brixen in South Tirol. Meanwhile the German offensive towards Paris had ground to a halt and the war of attrition had begun.
A most unwelcome surprise to the forces of the Danube Empire was a humiliating defeat by Serbia. [...] but the exhausted Serbs could go no farther and all became quiet on the southeastern front. At about this time, Erwin was transferred to Komaron, a Hungarian garrison town between Vienna and Budapest.
While there he was able to write a paper for the Physikalische Zeitschrift, "On the Theory of Experiments on the Rise and Fall of Particles in Brownian Motion", which was received on July 26, 1915. This theory was related to work in progress in Vienna on the charge of the electron.
- - -
ON THE ITALIAN FRONT
On July 26, Schrödinger's unit was ordered from Komaron to install a new 12-cm marine battery on the Italian front. For the next two months, he kept a detailed diary of his activities. The marine battery was a great puzzle, for nobody seemed to know exactly where it was supposed to go, only the name of the locality, a place called Oreia Draga on the Istrian peninsula south of Trieste.
- - -
A battle raged around the Karst plateau, where the barren limestone rocks were pulverized by artillery fire. In repeated assaults the Italians failed to make significant gains through the Austrian defenses, but losses were heavy on both sides.
- - -
When Erwin was there about two years earlier, the military situation was about the same except that the Austrians still held Gorizia and about half a million young men had not yet been killed. Erwin noted that "we stood about for hours on the Karst plateau, and about midday had the foresight to take a meal including green bean salad and a passable beer. Towards evening we went through Görz and reached Oreia Draga about 8 p.m. The men had eaten nothing all day, because the supplies had not arrived although the transport officer had ordered them from Ogenia." They were able to took some canned good, and a good-natured regimental doctor provided some wine.
On the morning of the 29th, they marched to St Peter, with almost unbroken cannonading beyond Sessana. In St Peter they were met by Captain Novak and Colonel Heckler. Their battery was already in place and had already fired. The men were quartered in a farmhouse and the officers in the castle of the local count. "Very fine except that all the windows had been blown out by our 30.5 cm Mortar, which had flattened almost everything in the park." This was the best of the K & K artillery weapons, known as a "wonder gun".
After a short sleep, Erwin went by motorcar to Görz, finding the town half deserted because of the bombardments. Nevertheless he enjoyed the unusual comfort of the best hotel. That afternoon he went to help direct some artillery that was firing from a suburb. [...] The next morning he continued to direct the battery. On August 1, he observed the first firing of the marine battery, which was blasting away at church towers in the distance.
On August 2, he noted that "we are firing badly. I was balled out. I took control of all the operations myself, which slowed down the action. I was balled out some more. By afternoon it was going well. It is incredible that we were not fired upon at all or only insignificantly since we were using strongly smoky powder. Airplanes were looking for us." On August 4, the shooting was again poor; Erwin suggested what to do but they did not believe him. "Thank God! The other battery is also shooting poorly. The emplacement is already quite crooked." On August 6 the battery was for some time solidly placed, and the shooting went well. The foundation blocks were inclined at 11°. "Heckler, deputy commandant, is unwilling to move himself to take a look at it. I go out in the evening. The cannon doctor repairs the springs which were already quite slack because of the poor mounting, and he pours in half a litre of glycerine."
- - -
The war diary continued on September 6, with the notation that firing was resumed then after a long break on orders from Army Command. Probably they were short of ammunition, for at the end of August Erwin went to Leibach to collect some. There was a six-hour stop at Opcina, where he took the opportunity to visit the obelisk erected in 1830 in memory of a visit by Emperor Franz I. On August 24, he was thirteen hours in Leibach; the town was overflowing with about four times its normal population. "The streets were crowded with an unbroken stream of officers and whores. Most of the female refugees seem to live that way."
- - -
At the evening mess in the Castle, there were interesting accounts from some officers who had taken part in the debacles in Serbia and Galicia. In Serbia, they all lost their heads entirely in the precipitate retreat. The Serbians appeared astonished and did not push the pursuit.
- - -
On 19, September, Erwin wrote:
"Interesting events zero. For a long time it was absolutely quiet here, now at night there are front line attacks on the plateau. It is utterly boring. When I have otherwise nothing to do, I fill my mind with the psychology of the fundamentals of consciousness (memory, association, the concept of time)."
- - -
"We have war! [Wir haben Krieg!] The word sounds playful. Truly, I swear, the word sounds playful. For it sounds as though this were some out-of-the-ordinary state."
At this point the war diary breaks off [September 27]. Schrödinger began to receive some books of philosophy and copies of scientific journals, and he was able to rouse himself from the desperate boredom and futility of military life and to turn his mind to the kind of problems that he loved.
- - -
MILITARY CITATIONS
By the end of 1915, a combined German, Bulgarian and Austrian offensive had finally eliminated Serbia from the war, and some reinforcements could be sent to the Italian front. The third great battle of the lsonzo opened on October 18, with a seventy-hour Italian artillery barrage of unprecedented ferocity. Fortunately the K & K Fifth Army was in well fortified positions and when the attack was broken off early in December, the Italian gains had been limited to a small area of the west border of the Karst plateau. The Italians lost 125 000 killed and wounded, compared to the K & K loss of 80 000.
Schrödinger was awarded a citation for his outstanding service during this battle:
"In the battle of Oct. 23 to Nov. 13, while acting as a replacement for the battery commander, he commanded the battery with great success. During the preparations as well as in many engagements, he was in command as first officer at the gun emplacement. By his fearlessness and calmness in the face of recurrent heavy enemy artillery fire, he gave to the men a shining example of courage and gallantry. It was owing to his personal presence that the gun emplacement always fulfilled its assignment exactly and with success in the face of heavy enemy fire ... He has been at the front since July, 1915."
This was signed by his division commander on November 12, countersigned by divisional and corps commanders, and entered in his record in the War Archive.
- - -
On May 1, 1916, Schrödinger was promoted to Oberleutnant, and May 15, after a long winter break, fighting was resumed. The Italians were able to advance about 10 km in a salient around Gorizia and then captured the town. These were the bloodiest of the lsonzo battles, with Italian losses of 286 000 men and the Austro-Hungarian less than half that many.
- - -
Even though it did not solve the problem of abnormal audibility, this paper was an excellent example of classical applied physics. It is written with the clarity and attention to style and organization that already can be recognized as Schrödinger hallmarks. The harvest of long Gymnasium years devoted to the classical authors can be seen in the graceful prose of his scientific papers. If it were not for the mathematics, they could be read with pleasure as literary essays.
Schrödinger's stint in the army obviously had not dulled his theoretical skills, yet neither had the fallow period led to an outburst of original thinking about problems in the forefront of physics, in particular the problems of quantum theory and atomic structure that were stretching the fabric of classical physics to the breaking point. He was still reacting to various concerns of the somewhat isolated Vienna school, still using his great mathematical facility to make improvements in structures built by others, although he was now thirty years old, an age by which most great theoretical physicists have been prepared to rebel against the paradigms received from their university teachers.
FIRST PAPER ON QUANTUM THEORY
About midway through 1917, Schrödinger sent an article on "The Results of New Research on Atomic and Molecular Heats" to Die Naturwissenschaften [The Sciences].
- - -
THE END OF THE WAR
The supply situation in Austria-Hungary was deteriorating. The soldiers lived mostly on soup made of dried vegetables. The meat ration was 200 g a week in the front line and 100 g in the rear echelons, less than a McDonald hamburger, but usually lean horse meat. The meat was often full of worms, but the government informed the troops that, though unappetizing, they were not dangerous to health. In some divisions, only front-line troops had uniforms; the reserves waited in underwear until it was their turn to be thrown into the battles. Under these conditions, Conrad persuaded Karl to launch a "final offensive" on the Italian front; when it foundered with heavy losses, he was finally retired.
The situation in Vienna was better, since a flourishing black market kept those who could afford it fairly well fed. In January, 1918, the bread ration was cut from 200 to 160 g a day, and workers went on strike in the armaments factories. It was necessary to detach seven divisions from the front to suppress the strikes.
- - -
[...] the blockade of Austria was lifted, although it continued to be applied to Germany. It is difficult to find a parallel in history to this deliberate starvation of a defeated enemy.
- - -
FROM VIENNA TO ZÜRICH
In the midst of all the postwar turmoil and suffering, Erwin took no respite from his intensive research at the Physics Institute. He also filled notebook after notebook with commentaries based upon his reading of European and Eastern philosophers. It was in these dying days of the Danube Empire that he formed the foundations of his philosophy, which was to remain remarkably constant all his life.
- - -
Erwin thought deeply about the teachings of the Hindu scriptures, reworked them into his own words, and ultimately came to believe in them. Possibly his half-famished state at this time was an involuntary mortification of the flesh conducive to religious experience.
Mais:
http://g1.globo.com/2013/08/google-faz-homenagem-ao-criador-do-gato-de-schrodinger.html
Lise Meitner
This paper is undoubtedly the most interesting of all written by [Erwin] Schrödinger before he was called into military service in 1914.
- - -
RESEARCH IN UNIFORM
During the first months of the war Erwin was able to complete some scientific work. The advantage of being a theoretician was that he could make calculations even in a dugout, although he missed the possibility of consulting the scientific journals. [...]
He had began some experimental measurements with wide-bore capillaries. He conclued by saying, "I intend to continue the measurements, which had to be interrupted at the end of July, so as to obtain more extensive data for testing the formula." Obviously he did not think that the war would continue four more years.
- - -
Erwin's next assignment was to Franzenteste, a fortress just north of Brixen in South Tirol. Meanwhile the German offensive towards Paris had ground to a halt and the war of attrition had begun.
A most unwelcome surprise to the forces of the Danube Empire was a humiliating defeat by Serbia. [...] but the exhausted Serbs could go no farther and all became quiet on the southeastern front. At about this time, Erwin was transferred to Komaron, a Hungarian garrison town between Vienna and Budapest.
While there he was able to write a paper for the Physikalische Zeitschrift, "On the Theory of Experiments on the Rise and Fall of Particles in Brownian Motion", which was received on July 26, 1915. This theory was related to work in progress in Vienna on the charge of the electron.
- - -
ON THE ITALIAN FRONT
On July 26, Schrödinger's unit was ordered from Komaron to install a new 12-cm marine battery on the Italian front. For the next two months, he kept a detailed diary of his activities. The marine battery was a great puzzle, for nobody seemed to know exactly where it was supposed to go, only the name of the locality, a place called Oreia Draga on the Istrian peninsula south of Trieste.
- - -
A battle raged around the Karst plateau, where the barren limestone rocks were pulverized by artillery fire. In repeated assaults the Italians failed to make significant gains through the Austrian defenses, but losses were heavy on both sides.
- - -
When Erwin was there about two years earlier, the military situation was about the same except that the Austrians still held Gorizia and about half a million young men had not yet been killed. Erwin noted that "we stood about for hours on the Karst plateau, and about midday had the foresight to take a meal including green bean salad and a passable beer. Towards evening we went through Görz and reached Oreia Draga about 8 p.m. The men had eaten nothing all day, because the supplies had not arrived although the transport officer had ordered them from Ogenia." They were able to took some canned good, and a good-natured regimental doctor provided some wine.
On the morning of the 29th, they marched to St Peter, with almost unbroken cannonading beyond Sessana. In St Peter they were met by Captain Novak and Colonel Heckler. Their battery was already in place and had already fired. The men were quartered in a farmhouse and the officers in the castle of the local count. "Very fine except that all the windows had been blown out by our 30.5 cm Mortar, which had flattened almost everything in the park." This was the best of the K & K artillery weapons, known as a "wonder gun".
After a short sleep, Erwin went by motorcar to Görz, finding the town half deserted because of the bombardments. Nevertheless he enjoyed the unusual comfort of the best hotel. That afternoon he went to help direct some artillery that was firing from a suburb. [...] The next morning he continued to direct the battery. On August 1, he observed the first firing of the marine battery, which was blasting away at church towers in the distance.
On August 2, he noted that "we are firing badly. I was balled out. I took control of all the operations myself, which slowed down the action. I was balled out some more. By afternoon it was going well. It is incredible that we were not fired upon at all or only insignificantly since we were using strongly smoky powder. Airplanes were looking for us." On August 4, the shooting was again poor; Erwin suggested what to do but they did not believe him. "Thank God! The other battery is also shooting poorly. The emplacement is already quite crooked." On August 6 the battery was for some time solidly placed, and the shooting went well. The foundation blocks were inclined at 11°. "Heckler, deputy commandant, is unwilling to move himself to take a look at it. I go out in the evening. The cannon doctor repairs the springs which were already quite slack because of the poor mounting, and he pours in half a litre of glycerine."
- - -
The war diary continued on September 6, with the notation that firing was resumed then after a long break on orders from Army Command. Probably they were short of ammunition, for at the end of August Erwin went to Leibach to collect some. There was a six-hour stop at Opcina, where he took the opportunity to visit the obelisk erected in 1830 in memory of a visit by Emperor Franz I. On August 24, he was thirteen hours in Leibach; the town was overflowing with about four times its normal population. "The streets were crowded with an unbroken stream of officers and whores. Most of the female refugees seem to live that way."
- - -
At the evening mess in the Castle, there were interesting accounts from some officers who had taken part in the debacles in Serbia and Galicia. In Serbia, they all lost their heads entirely in the precipitate retreat. The Serbians appeared astonished and did not push the pursuit.
- - -
On 19, September, Erwin wrote:
"Interesting events zero. For a long time it was absolutely quiet here, now at night there are front line attacks on the plateau. It is utterly boring. When I have otherwise nothing to do, I fill my mind with the psychology of the fundamentals of consciousness (memory, association, the concept of time)."
- - -
"We have war! [Wir haben Krieg!] The word sounds playful. Truly, I swear, the word sounds playful. For it sounds as though this were some out-of-the-ordinary state."
At this point the war diary breaks off [September 27]. Schrödinger began to receive some books of philosophy and copies of scientific journals, and he was able to rouse himself from the desperate boredom and futility of military life and to turn his mind to the kind of problems that he loved.
- - -
MILITARY CITATIONS
By the end of 1915, a combined German, Bulgarian and Austrian offensive had finally eliminated Serbia from the war, and some reinforcements could be sent to the Italian front. The third great battle of the lsonzo opened on October 18, with a seventy-hour Italian artillery barrage of unprecedented ferocity. Fortunately the K & K Fifth Army was in well fortified positions and when the attack was broken off early in December, the Italian gains had been limited to a small area of the west border of the Karst plateau. The Italians lost 125 000 killed and wounded, compared to the K & K loss of 80 000.
Schrödinger was awarded a citation for his outstanding service during this battle:
"In the battle of Oct. 23 to Nov. 13, while acting as a replacement for the battery commander, he commanded the battery with great success. During the preparations as well as in many engagements, he was in command as first officer at the gun emplacement. By his fearlessness and calmness in the face of recurrent heavy enemy artillery fire, he gave to the men a shining example of courage and gallantry. It was owing to his personal presence that the gun emplacement always fulfilled its assignment exactly and with success in the face of heavy enemy fire ... He has been at the front since July, 1915."
This was signed by his division commander on November 12, countersigned by divisional and corps commanders, and entered in his record in the War Archive.
- - -
On May 1, 1916, Schrödinger was promoted to Oberleutnant, and May 15, after a long winter break, fighting was resumed. The Italians were able to advance about 10 km in a salient around Gorizia and then captured the town. These were the bloodiest of the lsonzo battles, with Italian losses of 286 000 men and the Austro-Hungarian less than half that many.
- - -
Even though it did not solve the problem of abnormal audibility, this paper was an excellent example of classical applied physics. It is written with the clarity and attention to style and organization that already can be recognized as Schrödinger hallmarks. The harvest of long Gymnasium years devoted to the classical authors can be seen in the graceful prose of his scientific papers. If it were not for the mathematics, they could be read with pleasure as literary essays.
Schrödinger's stint in the army obviously had not dulled his theoretical skills, yet neither had the fallow period led to an outburst of original thinking about problems in the forefront of physics, in particular the problems of quantum theory and atomic structure that were stretching the fabric of classical physics to the breaking point. He was still reacting to various concerns of the somewhat isolated Vienna school, still using his great mathematical facility to make improvements in structures built by others, although he was now thirty years old, an age by which most great theoretical physicists have been prepared to rebel against the paradigms received from their university teachers.
FIRST PAPER ON QUANTUM THEORY
About midway through 1917, Schrödinger sent an article on "The Results of New Research on Atomic and Molecular Heats" to Die Naturwissenschaften [The Sciences].
- - -
THE END OF THE WAR
The supply situation in Austria-Hungary was deteriorating. The soldiers lived mostly on soup made of dried vegetables. The meat ration was 200 g a week in the front line and 100 g in the rear echelons, less than a McDonald hamburger, but usually lean horse meat. The meat was often full of worms, but the government informed the troops that, though unappetizing, they were not dangerous to health. In some divisions, only front-line troops had uniforms; the reserves waited in underwear until it was their turn to be thrown into the battles. Under these conditions, Conrad persuaded Karl to launch a "final offensive" on the Italian front; when it foundered with heavy losses, he was finally retired.
The situation in Vienna was better, since a flourishing black market kept those who could afford it fairly well fed. In January, 1918, the bread ration was cut from 200 to 160 g a day, and workers went on strike in the armaments factories. It was necessary to detach seven divisions from the front to suppress the strikes.
- - -
[...] the blockade of Austria was lifted, although it continued to be applied to Germany. It is difficult to find a parallel in history to this deliberate starvation of a defeated enemy.
- - -
FROM VIENNA TO ZÜRICH
In the midst of all the postwar turmoil and suffering, Erwin took no respite from his intensive research at the Physics Institute. He also filled notebook after notebook with commentaries based upon his reading of European and Eastern philosophers. It was in these dying days of the Danube Empire that he formed the foundations of his philosophy, which was to remain remarkably constant all his life.
- - -
Erwin thought deeply about the teachings of the Hindu scriptures, reworked them into his own words, and ultimately came to believe in them. Possibly his half-famished state at this time was an involuntary mortification of the flesh conducive to religious experience.
Mais:
http://g1.globo.com/2013/08/google-faz-homenagem-ao-criador-do-gato-de-schrodinger.html
Lise Meitner
