SCHRÖDINGER AND VON NEUMANN

In February 1943, at a bleak moment in the history of mankind, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger gave a course of lectures to a mixed audience at Trinity College, Dublin. Ireland was then, as it had been in the days of Saint Columba fourteen hundred years earlier, a refuge for scholars and a nucleus of civilization beyond the reach of invading barbarians. It was one of the few places in Europe where peaceful scientific meditation was still possible. Schrödinger proudly remarks in the published version of the lectures that they were given “to an audience of about four hundred which did not substantially dwindle.” The lectures were published by the Cambridge University Press in 1944 in a little book (Schrödinger, 1944) with the title What is Life?

Schrödinger's book is less than a hundred pages long. It was widely read and was influential in guiding the thoughts of the young people who created the new science of molecular biology in the following decade. It is clearly and simply written, with only five references to the technical literature and less than ten equations from beginning to end. It is, incidentally, a fine piece of English prose. Although Schrödinger was exiled from his native Austria to Ireland when he was over fifty, he wrote English far more beautifully than most of his English and American contemporaries.