[science] inspired Watson and Crick's research into DNA. The first edition, first impression of Nobel prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger's (1887-1961) important contribution to the development of molecular biology.

In What is life? Schrödinger approached the working of a living organism as a problem of theoretical physics, first raising the necessity for a genetic code to explain how information relevant to the future development of organisms could be stored in the molecule. Both Crick and Watson later acknowledged the influence of this short work on their own investigations into the gene, leading ultimately to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in 1953.

The book was the product of a series of lectures Schrödinger had been invited to give whilst Director of Theoretical Physics at Trinity College, Dublin. Schrödinger, who had left his native Austria following the Anschluss in 1938, helped to establish an Institute for Advanced Studies in Ireland at the request of the recently elected Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, himself a keen mathematician.

'It seems almost unnecessary to add that the great question with which this book is titled is asked, not for the sake of the physicist only but on behalf of the mortal mind which he (with all) inhabits. In this lurks a guarantee for the common reader: that he has the right to read, and to expect to gain from, the physicist's way of putting the question' (Blurb). An enjoyable read, aimed at the layman.

First edition, first impression; 8vo (19.5 x 13 cm); 4 photographic plates, numerous in-text illustrations; publisher's green cloth, gilt spine, original unclipped dustjacket, lettered in green, tape repairs to inside spine of jacket with resulting glue residue to cloth, small tears to spine ends, otherwise internally crisp and clean; viii, 91, [1]pp.