Recently, I came across an arXiv upload that discussed poetry written by Schrödinger.
Below is a flavor of Schrödinger’s poetry reproduced from the arXiv article:
“The brooding sun rests softly on the lake
And barely marks its shallow breathing
As gentle waves rock up and down
In heavy glare of midday heat.
….”
One of the surprising things I learned is that Schrödinger was interested in becoming a poet but later turned to physics and mathematics to ensure financial security: “Thus, in a 1931 interview by the English journalist and science writer John W. N. Sullivan he said: “I took up mathematics and physics quite early … But I must not give the impression that science alone interested me. As a matter of fact, my early desire was to be a poet. But I speedily realised that poetry was not a paying business. Science, on the other hand, offered me a career”” (Kragh, 2026, p. 2)
Schrodinger had a deep interest in cultural studies and wrote a lot about them, as the author points out: “Apart from being a brilliant physicist, Schrödinger was also a humanist scholar, a polymath who engaged in cultural studies relating to music, theatre, philosophy, history, philology, and literature [Gronau and Gronau 2021]. Science and Humanism and Nature and the Greeks, both books written while he stayed in Dublin, bear witness to his broad cultural interests.” (Kragh, 2026, p. 1)
It is also intriguing to see a few other physicists try their hand at poetry, as in this case with Felix Bloch:
“Erwin with his psi can do
Calculations quite a few.
But one thing has not been seen:
Just what does psi really mean?” (Kragh, 2026, p. 2)
The article also has a discussion on Schrödinger’s Galilean dialogue, which has inclinations towards the development of ideas in physics.
Do read the reference below for more:
Kragh, Helge. ‘Erwin Schroedinger: His Poetry and Fragment of a Galilean Dialogue’. arXiv:2607.29497. Preprint, arXiv, 31 July 2026. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.29497.
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