Who is the lady of Arosa?

It's fall, 1925. Erwin Schrodinger, the physicist, is in a funk. His marriage is on the rocks. Worse, at 38, he has made no great discoveries. He knows full well that Einstein and Bohr had made their major contributions in their mid-twenties. For a physicist, he is over the hill.

Both in 1923 and 1924, Schrodinger and his wife spent the Christmas holidays at an Alpine resort in Arosa, Switzerland. This year, 1925, he goes alone. His wife is having an affair. He's had affairs of his own. He is an unhappy man.

But he contacts an old girlfriend, asking her to meet him at Arosa. Historians assume that she did -- and that she is responsible for a dramatic, miraculous change in Schrodinger's mental life. While in Arosa, while shacked up with his ex, he creates the remarkable equations that become a major contribution to quantum mechanics and secure his fame.

Like the dark lady who inspired Shakespeare's sonnets, the lady of Arosa may remain forever mysterious. We know that she was not Lotte or Irene. In all likelihood she was not Felicie; her husband had lost his fortune in the postwar inflation and had gone to Brasil, leaving her with an infant daughter. Whoever may have been his inspiration, the increase in Erwin's powers was dramatic, and he began a twelve-month period of sustained creative activity that is without a parallel in the history of science. When he was enthralled by an important problem, he was able to achieve intense and absolute concentration, bringing to bear all his great mathematical powers.

On December 27, he wrote from Arosa to Willy Wien in Munich. "At the moment I am struggling with a new atomic theory. If only I only knew more mathematics! I am very optimistic about this thing and expect that if I can only . . . solve it, it will be very beautiful."

(From Schrodinger: Life and Thought by Walter Moore.)

I love mysteries like this. It was a similar historical mystery -- did Moliere marry his own daughter? -- that led to one of my best works, Sad Laughter. I've been brooding about what to do with this one. A chamber opera, perhaps? At any rate, I am fascinated by the link between erotic and creative energy here, by a man who thought his creative life was over.