Nobel-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger had a complicated relationship
with mornings. At times, his sorrow over WWI kept him from getting out
of bed; other times he was too hungover. He even reorganized the Planck
lectures so that he could deliver them later in the day. But by the
1920s, he was also fond of going to the beach in Zurich in the mornings
with a blackboard, and he'd sit in the grass in his bathing trunks and
work out equations.
A student recalled that in the early 20s, Schrödinger liked to go to the
beach in the mornings. When he was there, he had an interesting
occupation. "In summertime when it was warm enough we went to the
bathing beach on the Lake of Zurich, sat with our own notes on the grass
and watched this lean man," the student said. "[He was] in bathing
trunks writing his calculations before us on an improvised blackboard
which we had brought along. At the time few people came to the bathing
beach in the morning and those that did watched us from a discreet
distance and wondered what that man was writing on the blackboard!”
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