Today on Google worldwide you will see a scientific looking logo with a cat on it, over a yellow background making up the Google Doodle today. It is to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Austrian quantum physicist, Erwin Schrodinger.
Erwin Schrodinger developed many theories in quantum theory that lead to the basis of wave mechanics. Why is there a cat in the doodle? Well, his cat, Milton, helped him with some of his theories. Specifically, as Wikipedia describes it:
Schrödinger's cat: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead. This poses the question of when exactly quantum superposition ends and reality collapses into one possibility or the other.
This helped him win the The Nobel prize, amongst some of his other accomplishments.
You can learn more about his life on Wikipedia.
His birthday was today in 1887 born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary and he died at the age of 73 on January 4, 1961 in Vienna, Austria.
Forum discussion at Google+.
