Annemarie Bertel

Annemarie Bertel was an Austrian woman primarily known as the lifelong wife and companion of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Her life was deeply intertwined with the tumultuous personal and professional journey of one of the key architects of quantum mechanics. While often in the background of Schrödinger's storied career, which included positions at institutions like the University of Zurich, University of Oxford, and the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, her presence spanned a period of immense scientific discovery and global upheaval, including both World War I and World War II.

Early life and family

Annemarie Bertel was born in Salzburg, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Little is documented about her early family life and education prior to her relationship with Erwin Schrödinger. She met Schrödinger, who was from Vienna, in 1913 when she was in her early twenties. Their courtship was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, during which Schrödinger served as an artillery officer on the Italian Front. The couple maintained their connection throughout the war, and they married in 1920, shortly after its conclusion. This period coincided with Schrödinger's early academic posts in Jena, Stuttgart, and Breslau, before his pivotal appointment to the University of Zurich.

Relationship with Erwin Schrödinger

Annemarie Bertel's marriage to Erwin Schrödinger was unconventional and open, enduring despite his numerous and well-documented romantic affairs, including a long-term relationship with Hildegunde March which produced a daughter. Throughout Schrödinger's most productive years, including his formulation of the Schrödinger equation in 1926 and his receipt of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933, Bertel remained a constant figure. She accompanied him on his academic peregrinations across Europe, moving to Berlin where he succeeded Max Planck, then to Oxford after he left Nazi Germany in protest. Their travels continued through Graz in Austria, a brief, fraught return before fleeing again following the Anschluss, and ultimately to Dublin in 1939 where Schrödinger helped establish the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Despite the complexities of their personal arrangement, their partnership provided a thread of stability through the upheavals of the mid-20th century.

Later life and legacy

Following Erwin Schrödinger's retirement from Dublin in 1956, Annemarie Bertel returned with him to Vienna, where he took a special professorship. She cared for him during his final years of declining health until his death from tuberculosis in 1961 at the Alpbach sanatorium. Bertel survived her husband by twelve years, passing away in Innsbruck in 1973. Her legacy is intrinsically linked to the biography of one of the 20th century's greatest scientists. While her own voice and perspectives are less recorded in the historical narrative compared to figures like Mileva Marić or Margrethe Bohr, her enduring presence through Schrödinger's nomadic career across multiple countries and continents offers a personal lens on the era's intellectual migration and the personal costs behind monumental scientific achievement.

Category:1891 births Category:1973 deaths Category:Austrian people Category:Spouses of scientists