What is Life? (Canto Classics)

One of Jim Al-Khalili's Top 10 Science books

A true classic. This small book was written in 1944 by the Austrian physicist of cat-in-the-box fame. It has remained in print because it is still highly relevant today. Schrödinger speculates in it on whether life is special because it is able to utilise the trickery of quantum mechanics.

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Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger's What is Life? is one of the great science classics of the twentieth century. It was written for the layman, but proved to be one of the spurs to the birth of molecular biology and the subsequent discovery of DNA. What is Life? 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, which offer a fascinating account of his life as a background to his scientific writings.