7 - Berlin

Summary

schrödinger had accepted an invitation from the University of Wisconsin to give a course of lectures early in 1927; they would pay $2500, which included an allowance for travel costs.1 He sent a paper to Physical Review which was published in the December, 1926, issue, so that the American physicists would have an excellent summary of his work on wave mechanics, and he would not need to review all the fundamentals when he lectured at American universities. Shortly before he left for America, he heard that he was a leading candidate for the succession to Max Planck at the University of Berlin.

American voyage

On December 16, Erwin and Anny attended a Christmas and Farewell Party held in the Physics Institute of the University. Edgar Meyer was master of ceremonies, and he recited one of the long doggerel poems for which he was famous. It included the verses:

Schon Galileo hat es uns gezeigt

Das jeder Körper in Ruhe bleibt

Zwingt ihn nicht eine auss're Kraft

Zu ändern die Bewegungseigenschaft.

Und so auch hier; denn glaubt Ihr lieben Leute

Wir könnten Abschied feiern heute?

Hatt’ nicht die Anny zart getrieben,

Der Erwin war zu Haus geblieben.

Since Edgar Meyer always had some basis for his verses, it is likely that considerable urging was necessary to get Erwin to leave zürich and thereby sacrifice his Christmas vacation.

They set out on December 18 for the new world, by train to Basel and Paris, and then the boat train to Le Havre where they boarded the French liner de Grasse for a ten-day voyage to New York. Erwin grumbled from the beginning. He found his fellow passengers distinctly unattractive ‘examples of the modern “society” that I usually manage to keep at arm's distance.’ At dinner he was seated between two painted and powdered ladies ‘beyond the canonical age’ and he found the ‘hard, ruthless expressions’ of their consorts equally repulsive. Their French manners, for him, made the bad company even worse. His disposition was not helped by the fact that he was cooped up in a small cabin with Anny, who was frightfully seasick throughout the voyage.