Erwin Schrodinger

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger (Born 12 August 1887 – Died 4 January 1961) was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who is widely cited as the father of quantum physics, best remembered for his 1935 thought experiment "Schrödinger’s Cat". In 2021, the Irish Times published an article with the headline "How Erwin Schrödinger indulged his ‘Lolita complex’ in Ireland", which led to many later articles describing him as a paedophile / pedophile. This page examines the publicly available evidence used by the Irish Times piece, which is the main source given by subsequent media articles, and led to negative consequences for Schrödinger's legacy (see "Response to Pedophile Allegations" below).

Was Erwin Schrödinger a Pedophile? Assessing the Evidence

Reportedly, Schrödinger kept a record of his sexual activity, which included sexual contacts with people below 18 years of age, in a diary he called Ephemeridae. To our knowledge, its contents are not accessible to the public via a digital archive, so we cannot independently verify claims related to this diary.

As of February 2023, the English wikipedia for Schrödinger uses information from at least one biographer in a deceptive and misleading way. The page states:

"At the age of 39, Schrödinger tutored 14-year-old "Ithi" Junger. As John Gribbin recounted in his 2012 biography of Schrödinger, "As well as the maths, the lessons included 'a fair amount of petting and cuddling' and Schrödinger soon convinced himself that he was in love with Ithi". Schrödinger assured Junger she wouldn't become pregnant, and seduced her at 17. She later became pregnant and had an abortion that left her sterile. Schrödinger left her soon after and moved on to other targets."

This passage may leave readers incorrectly believing that Schrödinger and Ithi had sexual contact when she was 14, that their relationship was not one of mutual willingness and romantic attraction, and even that Schrödinger tricked Ithi into sex and then felt no concern for her complications after a botched abortion procedure. Further, the use of victimological language is not shared by the biographer Gribbin, and less biased account can be found in his book:

"Itha was one of a pair of non-identical twin sisters whose mother was an acquaintance of Anny Schrödinger. [...] The maths lessons were a great success, with most of their tutor’s attention naturally being devoted to Itha, and both girls achieved the standard required to move on with their classmates when the next school term began. But as well as the maths, the lessons included “a fair amount of petting and cuddling,” and Schrödinger soon convinced himself that he was in love with Ithi [...] He talked to her about his scientific work and about his religious beliefs, wrote poetry for her, spent a skiing holiday with the two girls and their mother over Christmas 1927 [...]

Of course, the head of the young convent-school girl was turned by all the attention, and in due course she fell in love with him. But he was patient. It wasn’t until she was sixteen that he went into Ithi’s room in the middle of the night (during another skiing holiday) and told her how much he loved her; and not until just after her seventeenth birthday, in August 1929, that the relationship was consummated. The affair continued into the 1930s, with Schrödinger at one point seriously considering divorcing Anny to marry Ithi, and forms a backdrop which cannot be ignored to Schrödinger’s scientific life in the years following his discovery of wave mechanics" (bold by Newgon editors). [...]

the relationship with Itha developed to the point where she came to stay with Schrödinger in Berlin in the summer of 1932, while Anny was away. The result was pregnancy, and an abortion. Probably as a result of this, Itha, who would later marry an Englishman, suffered several miscarriages and was never able to have children." (pp. 131-132; pp. 157-158).

The Irish Times piece is also misleading given its title, mixing the above event involving a legal minor/teenager - "Ithi" Junger - who was close-in-age to (or exceeding) many age of consent statutes at 17, with the case of Kate Nolan (pseudonym) who was 26 when she met Schrödinger (Gribbin, p. 213) and became pregnant.

Carlo Rovelli claims, in his book Helgoland (2021), that Schrödinger "always kept a number of relationships going at once – and made no secret of his fascination with preadolescent girls." According to Bernard Biggar, Schrödinger was interested in pursuing a sexual/romantic relationship with his cousin, Barbara MacEntee, when she was 12 years old. Apparently, her uncle, the mathematician and priest Pádraig de Brún, advised Schrödinger to no longer pursue her, and Schrödinger later wrote in his journal that she was one of his "unrequited loves". MacEntee died in 1995, with the account emerging posthumously.

Despite sensationalist media articles, we have only found one clear example of minor-older sex that Schrödinger engaged in (Ithi Junger, 17 years old). Otherwise, he is known to have declared his attraction towards Lotte Rella (described as his "adolescent crush" by Gribbin, p. 20), who was "several years his junior" (Irish Times), Felicie Krauss, who was 15 when Schrödinger was 24, and Annemarie Bertel, who was 16 when Schrödinger was 25.

On Krauss, Gribbin wrote:

"Felicie was nine years younger than Erwin, and as a child he had often, to his disgust, had to look after the little girl when the two families got together. When her father died in 1911, Felicie was not quite fifteen, and Erwin’s feelings were now quite the reverse — he was happy to be with her on every possible occasion, although what was possible was strictly limited by the conventions of polite society. Johanna Krauss was alarmed by the developing relationship between Felicie and Erwin, who as an impoverished, free-thinking (perhaps even atheist) academic was in her eyes quite unsuitable husband material. She forbade the couple to meet more than once a month — which, of course, increased their ardour until they became informally engaged. [...] At her mother’s behest, Felicie told Erwin that it was all over in the summer of 1913, when he was halfway through the process of becoming a Privatdozent. But Felicie, who later married a lieutenant in the Austrian army from a similar social background to her own, remained friends with Erwin, and later with his wife, Anny." (pp. 50-51).

Similarly, on Bertel, Gribben explains that he met her "just after the split with Felicie", when she was brought to join his family and friends on a trip to a lake:

"They also brought with them a teenage girl from Salzburg, Annemarie (Anny) Bertel, to look after the children. She had been born on the last day of 1896, so in the summer of 1913 she was only sixteen, and still in pigtails. Fifty years later, in an interview for the Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, she recalled being impressed by the “very good looking” young scientist, and he clearly noticed her, but nothing significant passed between them at the time." (p. 52).

[...]

"[Schrödinger] enjoyed a visit from Anny Bertel, who had turned twenty at the end of 1916. According to Schrödinger’s notebooks, which rather ungallantly indicate all his lovers (albeit in code), they did not become intimate at this time". (p. 57).

Sources consulted here indicate that no sexual activity between Schrödinger, Krauss or Bertel, took place until both females would have been over 18 years of age, and thus able to give legally valid consent by 21st century standards. The only mention of a specific individual who would have a reasonable likelihood of being pre-pubescent is Barbara MacEntee (12 years old), who is explicitly stated to have not had sexual contact with Schrödinger, after he accepted her relative's advice "to no longer pursue her". This claim itself comes from the Irish Times, with the article reproducing an unsourced and unverified claim made by Bernard Biggar, with no quote, link or citation of Schrödinger or MacEntee's diaries or writings which would evidence the claim. Taking the evidence together, there is thus no evidence provided for the claim that Schrödinger was preferentially attracted to people before puberty, i.e. a "pedophile". He may, however, qualify as a non-exclusive MAP (Minor Attracted Person), or a typical heterosexual teleiophile, as research has shown non-preferential attraction to post-pubescent minors is almost universal in males (see Research).

In his diary, Schrödinger reportedly wrote that his attraction to young post-pubescent (teenage) females was:

"Comparable in some way to the end of the spectrum, which in its deepest violet shows a tendency towards purple and red, it seems to be the usual thing that men of strong, genuine intellectuality are immensely attracted only by women who, forming the very beginning of the intellectual series, are as nearly connected to the preferred springs of nature as they themselves." (Irish Times)

Response to Pedophile Allegations

Despite the lack of evidence to accurately declare Schrödinger a pedophile, multiple media outlets uncritically reproduced the claims and framing of the Irish Times. In response to these claims, a petition which gained somewhere between 50-250 signatures depending on the source consulted, was started on change.org to rename a lecture theater at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, after "a non-paedophile" instead of Schrödinger. The Irish Times article appears to have had a direct impact on professors in the Physics department, with The University Times reporting that:

"Two staff members in the School confirmed to The University Times that a meeting will be held to discuss the possibility of renaming the theatre, after an Irish Times article published in December detailed Schrödinger’s record as a “sexual predator”."

On the 8th February 2022, the School of Physics made the decision to revert the room to its previous name, the “Physics Lecture Theatre”, and stated plans to remove a portrait of Schrödinger from the building.