Schrödinger’s tridiagonal matrix

Abstract In the third part of his famous 1926 paper ‘Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem’, Schrödinger came across a certain parametrized family of tridiagonal matrices whose eigenvalues he conjectured. A 1991 paper wrongly suggested that his conjecture is a direct consequence of an 1854 result put forth by Sylvester. Here we recount some of the arguments that led Schrödinger to consider this particular matrix and what might have led to the wrong suggestion. We then give a self-contained elementary (though computational) proof which would have been accessible to Schrödinger. It needs only partial fraction decomposition. We conclude this paper by giving an outline of the connection established in recent decades between orthogonal polynomial systems of the Hahn class and certain tridiagonal matrices with fractional entries. It also allows to prove Schrödinger’s conjecture.