Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) was an Austrian physicist who formulated wave mechanics (the Schrödinger equation, 1926), shared the 1933 Nobel Prize, and gave us the famous “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment — which he intended as a critique of naïve interpretations of quantum superposition, not an endorsement of “observer creates reality.” His little book What Is Life? (1944) productively influenced molecular biology.

This is foundational, legitimate physics. Unlike Planck, Schrödinger genuinely held mystical philosophical views, and this is where mind-power usage gets complicated. He was a serious student of Vedanta and wrote, in Mind and Matter and My View of the World, that consciousness is fundamentally singular — that the apparent plurality of minds is illusion and “Atman = Brahman,” all consciousness is ultimately One.

These are sincere, considered metaphysical commitments. However, they are a philosophical position derived from Hindu thought, not a consequence of his physics, and Schrödinger himself was careful not to claim his equations proved Vedanta.

Manifestation and quantum-mysticism writers collapse this distinction, citing “the man who wrote the wave equation” as scientific proof that one universal mind creates reality, or that observation literally manifests outcomes.

Tier: legitimate-science (the physics) plus sincere mysticism (the Vedanta) that is misappropriated when presented as physics-derived.