What is Life?

What is Life? (1944) is a classic scientific text based on a series of lectures given at Trinity College, Dublin, by famous physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Though Schrödinger was a physicist, these lectures addressed issues in biology and genetics –⁠ primarily the fundamental question of how physics and chemistry can account for the processes that occur within living organisms. The concepts he explored went on to spark a revolution in genetics, inspiring, among others, the biologists James D. Watson and Francis Crick, who together proposed the double helix structure of DNA.

• Science geeks
• Big-picture thinkers, ponderers, and questioners
• Anyone who loves getting to the bottom of how the universe works

Erwin Schrödinger, known in popular culture for his “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment, was one of the most influential physicists of all time. He won the Nobel Prize in 1933 for his advances in atomic theory, made significant contributions to the field of quantum theory, and wrote on a wide range of other topics related to physics. He’s one of several physicists frequently referred to as “the father of quantum mechanics.”