Schrodinger: love cat/rat

I just noticed at Bee's blog that she did drew a card of famous physicist Schrodinger,  in which one of his claims to fame is noted as "practised open polyamory and got away with it."   Can't say that I recall reading that about him before. 

But, yeah, he was unconventional in his love life, and tuberculous didn't hold him back.  From a book "Great Physicists" we get the general picture:

 

For more detail on the menage a trois arrangement that lasted a long time, there's this summary:

Erwin Schrödinger ... lived in an open polyfamily: a ménage à trois with his wife Anny Bertel and partner Hilde March. They had the blessing of March's husband, the physicist Arthur March, who was himself a lover of Anny's. Together the three raised Erwin and Hilde's daughter, Ruth March.

Despite his brilliant career, world fame, and 1933 Nobel Prize in physics, Schrödinger was apparently rebuffed at Oxford and Princeton for his unconventional home life. Eventually, in 1940, the family settled in Ireland by the grace of the Irish prime minister (a mathematician).

His wife, Anny, had another lover apart from March, apparently:

...Schrödinger asked for a colleague, Arthur March, to be offered a post as his assistant with him where he went.

The request for March stemmed from Schrödinger's unconventional relationships with women: although his relations with his wife Anny were good, he had had many lovers with his wife's full knowledge (and in fact, Anny had her own lover, [the mathematician and physicist] Hermann Weyl). Schrödinger asked for March to be his assistant because, at that time, he was in love with March's wife Hilde.

Gee, it's a wonder that these physicists doing the great ground breaking work of the first half of the 20th century had the energy to come up with their insights, after all this bed-hopping.

Schrodinger's love of love was not without it's unfortunate consequences, though:

He kept a detailed log of his numerous sexual escapades, included a teen-aged girl he seduced and impregnated while acting as her math tutor. [Well, there he goes as a poster boy. –Ed.] He had children by at least three of his mistresses...

 And the reputation of a liking for the very young girls apparently followed him around:

However on a darker note, it also triggered “his fascination with young girls on the brink of adolescence.” And although Gribbin is careful to point out that Schrödinger never really acted on these urges, it was not always for lack of trying (he was once warned off a colleague’s 12-year-old daughter) and the fixation certainly is troubling.

Well, you can learn something disreputable every day, it seems...