Nobel-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a complicated relationship with mornings. At times, his sorrow over WWI kept him from getting out of bed; other times he was too hungover. He even reorganized the Planck lectures so that he could deliver them later in the day. But by the 1920s, he was also fond of going to the beach in Zurich in the mornings with a blackboard, and he’d sit in the grass in his bathing trunks and work out equations.
A student recalled that in the early 20s, Schrödinger liked to go to the beach in the mornings. When he was there, he had an interesting occupation. “In summertime when it was warm enough we went to the bathing beach on the Lake of Zurich, sat with our own notes on the grass and watched this lean man,” the student said. “[He was] in bathing trunks writing his calculations before us on an improvised blackboard which we had brought along. At the time few people came to the bathing beach in the morning and those that did watched us from a discreet distance and wondered what that man was writing on the blackboard!”
Erwin Schrödinger Was Not A Morning Person
[Phil Edwards/Trivia Happy]
(Image: Erwin Schrodinger2, public domain)
