Quantum_ Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate About the Nature of Reality - Manjit Kumar [106]
All able-bodied young men in Austria-Hungary were required to do three years of military service. But as a university graduate he was able to choose a year's officer training, leading to a commission in the reserve ranks. When he returned to civilian life in 1911, Schrödinger secured a position as an assistant to the professor of experimental physics at his old university. He knew he was not cut out to be an experimenter, but never regretted the experience. 'I belong to those theoreticians who know by direct observation what it means to make a measurement', he later wrote.4 'Methinks it were better if there were more of them.'
In January 1914, Schrödinger, aged 26, became a privatdozent. Like everywhere else, opportunities in theoretical physics in Austria were few. The road to the professorship he desired seemed a long and difficult one. So he toyed with the idea of abandoning physics. Then in August that year the First World War began and he was called up to fight. He had luck on his side from the very beginning. As an artillery officer, he served in fortified positions high on the Italian front. The only real danger he faced during his various postings was boredom. Then he began receiving books and scientific journals that helped to relieve the tedium. 'Is this a life: to sleep, to eat, and to play cards?' he wrote in his diary before the first consignment arrived.5 Philosophy and physics were the only things that kept Schrödinger from total despair: 'I no longer ask when will the war be over? But: will it be over?'6
Relief came when he was transferred back to Vienna in the spring of 1917 to teach physics at the university and meteorology at an anti-aircraft school. Schrödinger ended the war, as he wrote later, 'without getting wounded and without illness and with little distinction'.7 As for most others, the early post-war years were difficult for Schrödinger and his parents, with the family business ruined. As the Habsburg Empire fell apart, the situation was made worse as the victorious allies maintained a blockade that cut off food supplies. As thousands starved and froze during the winter of 1918–19 in Vienna, with little money to buy food on the black market, the Schrödingers were often forced to eat at a local soup kitchen. Things began to improve slowly after March 1919 when the blockade was lifted and the emperor went into exile. Salvation for Schrödinger arrived early the following year with the offer of a job at the University of Jena. The salary was just enough for him to marry 23-year-old Annemarie Bertel.
Arriving in Jena in April, the couple stayed just six months before Schrödinger was appointed to an extraordinary professorship in October at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart. The money was better, and after the experiences of the past few years that mattered to him. By spring 1921 the universities of Kiel, Hamburg, Breslau and Vienna were all looking to appoint theoretical physicists. Schrödinger, who had by then earned a solid reputation, was being seriously considered by all of them. He accepted the offer of a professorship at Breslau.
At the age of 34, Schrödinger might have achieved the ambition of every academic; however, in Breslau he had the title but not the salary to go with it, and he left when the University of Zurich came calling. Not long after arriving in Switzerland in October 1921, Schrödinger was diagnosed with bronchitis and possibly tuberculosis. Negotiations surrounding his future, and the deaths of his parents during the previous two years, had taken their toll. 'I was actually so kaput that I could no longer get any sensible ideas', he later told Wolfgang Pauli.8 On doctor's orders, Schrödinger went to a sanatorium in Arosa. It was in this high-altitude Alpine resort not far from Davos that he spent the next nine months