Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist whose work sits at the foundation of quantum theory. In 1926 he formulated the wave equation that bears his name, the tool by which the state of a quantum system is calculated and its evolution in time described. He coined the term quantum entanglement, wrote across thermodynamics, cosmology and colour theory, and in What Is Life? brought physics to bear on genetics. He shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with Paul Dirac, and left Germany that same year in opposition to the Nazi regime. In popular memory he is fixed to the thought experiment of the cat both alive and dead.

His scientific legacy cannot stand apart from a plain fact of his biography: during his years in Dublin he pursued sexual relationships with children. That is abuse, and it is named here without euphemism. A natal chart describes temperament, never conduct, and it neither explains nor excuses the harm he caused. Read only analytically, his Leo Sun speaks to a proud, self-assured drive for recognition, while his Taurus Moon marks a fixed, sensual, unyielding emotional nature that clung to what it wanted. The physics endures; so does the record of the wrong.