Schrödinger's Lost Manuscript: Found After 80 Years
For more than eight decades, an unpublished manuscript by Erwin Schrödinger lay in a library at the University of Vienna. Its title: “Collapse of Determinism”. Flavio Del Santo of the University of Geneva has now brought Schrödinger’s lost manuscript to light.
The story begins in Delhi. In January 1944, the Bengali physicist Satyendra Nath Bose spoke on classical determinism and quantum theory at the Indian Science Congress. That July, an article in Nature carried the debate to Europe, and to Schrödinger’s desk in Dublin. This short Bichitro Biggan video explains what he wrote, why he never published it, and how John Bell’s theorem and the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics carried the question forward.
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References
- H. T. H. Piaggio, "Collapse of Determinism", Nature 154, 122 (1944)
- S. N. Bose, "The Classical Determinism and the Quantum Theory", presidential address, Indian Science Congress, Delhi, January 1944
- J. S. Bell, "On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox", Physics 1, 195 (1964)
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, Anton Zeilinger
- Schrödinger, "Collapse of Determinism" manuscript, University of Vienna, Phaidra
