Abstract
The present article focuses on the theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger (1887−1961) and his early attempts to popularize physics in the twenties and early thirties. Special attention is drawn to the ›entanglement‹ of media prerequisites and the subject Schrödinger deals with. Exemplary analysis of the magazines in which Schrödinger published, illustrations, and Schrödinger’s rather journalistic, zeitgeisty style of writing reveals a specific way of imparting the small world of atomic physics, hidden to the eye, to a broader audience. While the majority of contemporary quantum theorists rejected the allegedly old-fashioned physics of pictures and models, Schrödinger’s popular scientific praxis of a vivid explanation is even reflected in his epistemological position regarding the central goal of theoretical physics - namely, producing clear and illustrative models.
© 2020 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
