Early in 1926, the Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger returned from vacation in the Swiss Alps with a notebook containing a handwritten equation that would permanently change how we understand reality. While Schr\u00f6dinger may have had unusual ideas about what qualifies vacations, his contemporaries found his equation to be far more radical.<\/p>\n
“Pretty much all of chemistry and materials science ultimately emerges from the Schr\u00f6dinger equation.”<\/p>\n
Ryan Babbush, director of quantum algorithms and applications research, Google Quantum AI<\/p>\n
Share The Schr\u00f6dinger equation rewrote the rules of matter and forever changed the field of chemistry. Donald Truhlar<\/a>, a chemist at the University of Minnesota, calls it the \u201cgreatest advance of the 20th century,\u201d along with Albert Einstein\u2019s theory of relativity.<\/p>\n Until Schr\u00f6dinger formulated his equation, quantum mechanics existed as a collection of creative fixes to baffling observations of the microscopic world. The universe of the tiny is very different from the one we see with our eyes. Back then, scientists noticed naturally occurring patterns they couldn\u2019t explain. They struggled to understand why atoms absorbed and emitted various colors of light and how electrons seemed to zip around atoms in fixed orbits without expending energy.<\/p>\n Austrian-Irish physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger researched wave mechanics and theorized the Schr\u00f6dinger equation (photograph taken in 1956).<\/p>\n Credit: They also found that light sometimes behaved like particles and that some particles acted like waves. Scientists measured these phenomena and invented mathematical rules that reproduced the results, but those rules were disconnected from each other.<\/p>\n Schr\u00f6dinger changed that by introducing a new way of describing microscopic reality. In his mathematical description, tiny particles do not sit in exact locations or move in well-defined paths the way regular, macroscopic objects do. Instead, they exist as quantum states that capture all possible outcomes and how likely each one is. In this view of matter, the position of a particle is more of a blurred heatmap than a dot marking an exact location. Electrons in an atom occupy orbitals. They don\u2019t move along fixed orbits but rather exist as probability clouds that indicate where they are most likely to exist.<\/p>\n Schr\u00f6dinger\u2019s equation describes the state of a particle and how it evolves through time based on the forces acting on it, like a complex form of Isaac Newton\u2019s equations of motion for electrons and other tiny particles. Scientists applied this equation to the atomic structure and found that it stitched all the seemingly disconnected, strange patterns of light emissions and atomic structures together into a predictable understanding of the inner workings of atoms and molecules.<\/p>\n “The Schr\u00f6dinger equation is the basis for all chemical thinking.”<\/p>\n Donald Truhlar, chemist, University of Minnesota Twin Cities<\/p>\n Share \u201cPretty much all of chemistry and materials science ultimately emerges from the Schr\u00f6dinger equation,\u201d says Ryan Babbush<\/a>, director of research at Google Quantum AI.<\/p>\n Molecular orbital theory was one of the most consequential results of the equation. As chemists put together atomic structures, they realized that bonds in molecules were not localized sticks between atoms and that the electrons were spread out over the entire molecule. This new, truer picture explained many chemical mysteries, including why some molecules such as benzene were unusually stable<\/a> and why some reactions happen easily and others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cThe equation dictates the motion and the behavior of all molecules, atoms, materials, and catalysts involved in chemistry,\u201d says Al\u00e1n Aspuru Guzik<\/a>, a chemist at the University of Toronto. It changed how chemistry was viewed as a science from a set of rules with some irregularities to a grounded description of matter itself.<\/p>\n The theory also made it possible to predict how chemicals behaved before synthesizing them, creating the foundation for computational chemistry. Truhlar calls it \u201cthe basis for all chemical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n “Today, chemistry without the Schr\u00f6dinger equation is simply unthinkable”<\/p>\n Laura Gagliardi, chemist, University of Chicago<\/p>\n
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