Erwin Schr�dinger was born on August 12, 1887, in Vienna, the only child of Rudolf Schr�dinger, who was married to a daughter of Alexander Bauer, his Professor of Chemistry at the Technical College of Vienna.

Erwin's father came from a Bavarian family which generations before had settled in Vienna. He was a highly gifted man with a broad education. After having finished his chemistry studies, he devoted himself for years to Italian painting. After this he took up botany, which resulted in a series of papers on plant phylogeny.