The physicist's guide to biology

There is symbolic irony in how Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s book What is Life? is hailed as a triumphant marriage of physics and biology. In the 1943 lectures on which the book was based – the 75^th anniversary of which is being celebrated this year – argued that physicists might have something useful to say about the mysteries of life, which studies in genetics were at that time starting to elucidate.