Abstract Lecturing in Dublin, one of the twentieth century’s most famous physicists set the stage of contemporary biology during the war-heavy year of 1944. Given Erwin Schrodinger’s towering reputation as the discoverer of the Schrodinger equation, the fundamental formulation of quantum mechanics, his public lectures and subsequent book were bound to draw high attention. But no one, not even Schrodinger himself, was likely to have foreseen the consequences. Schrodinger’s What Is Life? is credited with inspiring a generation of physicists and biologists to seek the fundamental character of living systems.