Erwin Schrödinger's lost manuscript rediscovered in Austrian archive

A previously unpublished manuscript by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger has been discovered in an Austrian archive after more than 80 years. The three-page document, titled ‘Collapse of Determinism’, was written sometime after November 1944.

Physicist and historian Flavio Del Santo of the University of Geneva published the first transcription and analysis of the work. The manuscript reveals that Schrödinger constructed a mathematical counterexample to an influential argument claiming that deterministic explanations of quantum behavior were impossible.

The discovery provides insight into Schrödinger’s views on the nature of reality. While quantum mechanics typically describes particle behavior in terms of probabilities, the manuscript suggests that Schrödinger explored whether certain seemingly random quantum events might follow hidden mathematical rules, challenging the absolute distinction between classical determinism and quantum indeterminism.