Erwin Schroedinger: His Poetry and Fragment of a Galilean Dialogue

Abstract

While Erwin Schroedinger's contributions to quantum mechanics and other areas of theoretical physics are very well known, his works as a poet and literary writer are usually ignored. In this paper I reconsider his poetry and refer to a few poems written about him. A short fragment of a Galileo-inspired dialogue that Schroedinger published in 1955 is as interesting as it is puzzling and little known. The dialogue is essentially about atomic theory as known much earlier, namely in the early 1910s. Indeed, there is the slight possibility that Schroedinger may originally have conceived it at that time and even composed a version of it. Apart from considering the origin and reception of the manuscript, I analyze its content from the point of view of the history of physics.