Question

What did Schrodinger contribute to science?

Was his atomic model ever proven false?
(Not for school, just curious)

Answer 1

He demonstrated that quantum mechanics could be constructed from the well-understood ideas of the behaviour of waves, provided one adopted the de Broglie concept that a particle had some kind of "wavelength" associated with it. This gave us wave mechanics, which has remained the principal introduction beginning students have to quantum mechanics.

Perhaps unfortunately -- Feynmann has argued that this muddles up the true nature of quantum mechanics, by convincing students that particles really ARE waves, e.g. an electron in an atom is just a smeared out unmoving negatively-charged goo in the shape of a sphere or dumbbell. Which is, of course, wrong. It's still a particle, and moving rapidly. (Even some textbooks don't present this clearly.)

Schroedinger never made a particular model of the atom. His wave mechanics can be used to solve a number of different models of the atom. The only place where it breaks down and isn't very useful is when spin is taken into account. That's because spin has no easily-definable wave interpretation.