Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. A distinguished physicist's exploration of the question which lies at the heart of biology, it was written for the layman, but proved one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of the structure of DNA. The philosopher Karl Popper hailed it as a "beautiful and important book." It appears here together with Mind and Matter, his essay investigating a relationship which has eluded and puzzled philosophers since the earliest times. Brought together with these two classics are Schrödinger's autobiographical sketches, published and translated here for the first time, which offer a fascinating fragmentary account of his life as a background to his scientific writings.--Publisher description.
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Showing 5 featured editions. View all 40 editions?
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1
What is life?: the physical aspect of the living cell ; with, Mind and matter ; & Autobiographical sketches
1992, Cambridge University Press
in English
0521427088 9780521427081
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What is life?: the physical aspect of the living cell : and Mind and matter
1992, Cambridge University Press
in English
052109397X 9780521093972
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What is life?: The physical aspect of the living cell
1945, The University Press, The Macmillan Company
in English
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What Is Life? is a 1944 non-fiction science book written for the lay reader by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943 at Trinity College, Dublin. Schrödinger's lecture focused on one important question: "how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?" In the book, Schrödinger introduced the idea of an "aperiodic crystal" that contained genetic information in its configuration of covalent chemical bonds. In the 1950s, this idea stimulated enthusiasm for discovering the genetic molecule and would give both Francis Crick and James Watson initial inspiration in their research.
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{{cite book|author1=Erwin Schrödinger |author2=Roger Penrose |date=1992 |orig-date=1944 |title=What is life? |url=https://archive.org/details/whatislife00schr |publication-place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-42708-8 |lccn=91028415 |oclc=24503223 |ol=1548875M}}