Almost exactly 100 years ago, in the early months of 1926, Erwin Schrödinger published a series of four papers that would transform not only the prevailing theories of physics but also mankind’s very understanding of the nature of reality. Though his work indisputably built upon the ideas of countless others, these papers crystalized the central and most astounding claim of what has become modern quantum mechanics: that at its heart, nature can be understood not as a collection of particles interacting in space but as the endless oscillation of an unseen “wavefunction,” which silently tallies and updates the probabilities of future events. In this talk, we will discuss the historical backdrop of these four transformative papers and then unpack the mathematical and physical innovations they contain (no background knowledge of math or physics is assumed). Finally; we will trace their centennial trajectories through the ensuing years, to reveal the enduring importance of these timeless papers, whose insights—and mysteries—have both only deepened with age.
a joint institute of 
and 
and