Schrödinger was a professor at the University of Berlin when the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. In that year all Jewish professors were dismissed from their positions at German universities. Schrödinger, although not Jewish himself, chose to leave – in protest.

He first moved to Oxford, and lived there with both his wife and his mistress. However, his living arrangements scandalised the academic establishment in Oxford. In 1936, he left with his family to take up a position in Graz, in his home country of Austria.

After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Schrödinger was viewed by the authorities as “politically unreliable”. He tried to repair his standing with the Nazis by publishing a letter in support of Hitler — something he later regretted. Despite the letter, he was dismissed from his position and instructed not to leave the country.

It was around this time that Schrödinger was invited to Ireland by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He managed to escape Austria and arrived in Dublin in 1939, becoming the first Director of the School of Theoretical Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

Schrödinger lived in Dublin for the next 17 years, becoming an Irish citizen in 1948. He later described them as “the happiest days of my life”. It seems that a socially conservative Ireland tolerated his unconventional private life: Schrödinger would also say that Dublin was “the only place in the world where a person like me would be able to live comfortably and without direct obligations, free to follow all his fancies”.

His most famous work in Dublin was his “What is Life?” lectures series, delivered in 1943. In 1956 Schrodinger returned to Austria, taking up a position at the University of Vienna.In 1957 he was proposed unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Austrian presidency. He died, aged 73, on 4th January 1961.