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50 free Erwin Schrödinger trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Erwin Schrödinger trivia quiz covers the Austrian physicist behind the most famous equation in quantum mechanics and the most famous cat in science. The easy questions cover the Nobel Prize he shared with Dirac, the cat, the word 'entanglement', Vienna and the book that pointed Watson and Crick at the gene. From there it moves through the life: the botanist father, the artillery service, the Berlin chair he inherited from Planck, the Oxford fellowship that fell apart over his living arrangements, and the Irish prime minister who offered him a home. The harder end covers the sanatorium where the equation was born, the paper title with 'eigenvalue' in it, the professor who dismissed him for 'political unreliability', the chair he accepted in India, the Dublin suburb, the Celtic theory, the affine field theory Einstein called 'preliminary', the Upanishads, the far-side crater and the schilling note. Every answer was checked against Schrödinger's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our physics and famous physicists quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Schrödinger shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics with which British physicist?
Paul Dirac
The two later tied for eighth in a Physics World poll of the greatest physicists of all time.
Q 02The 1933 Nobel citation praised the discovery of 'new productive forms of' what?
Atomic theory
It came the same year he fled Nazi Germany for Oxford.
Q 03Which now-ubiquitous term did Schrödinger coin in 1935?
Quantum entanglement
He called it the feature 'that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought'.
Q 04In which city was Schrödinger born in 1887?
Vienna
He was an only child; his mother was half Austrian and half English.
Q 05What was the profession of Schrödinger's father Rudolf?
Botanist
His mother was the daughter of a chemistry professor at the Vienna technical university.
Q 06Schrödinger learned English outside school thanks to a grandmother from where?
Britain
It served him well later at Oxford and in Dublin.
Q 07Though raised by a Catholic father and Lutheran mother, Schrödinger described himself as what?
An atheist
He nonetheless drew heavily on Eastern religion and pantheism and used religious symbolism in his writing.
Q 08Under which professor did Schrödinger receive his PhD in 1910?
Friedrich Hasenohrl
He then became assistant to Franz Exner and finished his habilitation under him in 1914.
Q 09During the First World War Schrödinger served as a commissioned officer in what?
The fortress artillery
His postings included Gorizia, Duino and Prosecco on the Italian front.
Q 10In 1921 Schrödinger moved to which Swiss university, where he stayed until 1927?
Zurich
It was during these years that he wrote the wave-mechanics papers.
Q 11Whom did Schrödinger succeed at the University of Berlin in 1927?
Max Planck
He left in 1933 in disgust at Nazi antisemitism, though he was not Jewish himself.
Q 12After leaving Germany in 1933, Schrödinger became a Fellow of which Oxford college?
Magdalen
The Nobel Prize arrived soon after he did.
Q 13Why did Schrödinger's position at Oxford not work out?
He lived with his wife and mistress
The same household arrangement probably cost him a permanent post at Princeton too.
Q 21In which Dublin suburb did Schrödinger live modestly on Kincora Road?
Clontarf
A plaque marks the house, and another his workplace in Merrion Square.
Q 22Schrödinger told the Irish Press that Austrians had a 'deeper connection' with which people?
The Celts
He pointed to supposedly Celtic place names in the Austrian Alps.
Q 23In which year did Schrödinger become a naturalised Irish citizen?
1948
He kept his Austrian citizenship as well.
Q 24What was the title of Schrödinger's influential 1944 book on genetics from a physicist's viewpoint?
Q 14After visa delays killed an Edinburgh post in 1936, Schrödinger took a chair at which Austrian university?
Graz
It lasted only until the Anschluss two years later.
Q 15Schrödinger had also accepted a chair of physics at which university in India?
Allahabad
He never took it up; Graz won out.
Q 16Schrödinger proposed his famous cat thought experiment in 1935 after extensive correspondence with whom?
Albert Einstein
The two later exchanged many letters on unified field theory as well.
Q 17On what grounds did the University of Graz dismiss Schrödinger in 1938?
'Political unreliability'
He had publicly recanted his anti-Nazi views to try to stay, a duplicity he later regretted in a letter to Einstein.
Q 18Ordered not to leave Austria in 1938, Schrödinger fled with his wife to which country?
Italy
From there he took visiting posts at Oxford and Ghent before Ireland beckoned.
Q 19Which Irish leader personally invited Schrödinger to settle in Dublin in 1939?
Eamon de Valera
Schrödinger wrote to him personally again to secure a visa for his mistress.
Q 20In Ireland, Schrödinger directed the School of Theoretical Physics at which newly established body?
The Institute for Advanced Studies
He held the post from 1940 until his retirement in 1955.
What Is Life?
It imagined a complex molecule carrying the genetic code, a decade before the double helix.
Q 25Which two scientists credited Schrödinger's book with steering them toward the structure of DNA?
Watson and Crick
Watson's memoir says it inspired him to research the gene; Crick recalled its speculations about how genetic information might be stored.
Q 26Schrödinger's 1944 book introduced which thermodynamic concept, meaning order fed on by living things?
Negentropy
The idea that life keeps itself ordered by exporting disorder remains a staple of biophysics.
Q 27At a 1956 World Power Conference lecture, Schrödinger refused to discuss nuclear power and gave what?
A philosophical talk
He had returned to Vienna as an emeritus professor after Austria regained neutrality.
Q 28Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a sanatorium in Arosa while being treated for what?
Tuberculosis
The disease that shaped his 1920s eventually killed him, in Vienna in 1961.
Q 29Schrödinger is buried in a Catholic cemetery in which Tyrolean village?
Alpbach
The priest allowed it after learning he was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Q 30Why was the non-Catholic Schrödinger allowed burial in a Catholic cemetery?
He belonged to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
The priest in charge of the graveyard made the exception on learning of the membership.