What Is Life? Mind and Matter. My Life and Thought

Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) ranks among the greatest minds of the 20th century. With this book, VUTIUM Publishing brings together three of his scientific and philosophical works, intended not only for specialists but also for the wider public. Schrödinger’s famous book *What Is Life?* (1944) ranks among the most scientifically influential works of the 20th century. It was in this work that Erwin Schrödinger elucidated the crystal structure of DNA and convincingly argued that it must be the carrier of the genetic code. The book is one of the significant milestones on the nearly century-long journey from the emergence of classical genetics to molecular genetics. The factual explanations of the stability of genes and a range of other phenomena were highly inspiring and influenced the work of many research institutions. The phenomenon of heredity and the fact that we can work our way towards understanding its complex nature seemed to Schrödinger, quite rightly, like a miracle. At the time of the first edition of the book What Is Life?, the emergence of molecular genetics was already clearly taking shape, leading to a profound understanding of the nature of this phenomenon, which the author explores in his extensive philosophical essay Mind and Matter (1958).In the conceptually original autobiographical sketch *My Life* (1960), the author presents a fascinating account of his life and scientific work. His professional career spanned positions in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Belgium and Dublin, Ireland. These details are not only interesting in themselves, but knowledge of them enables a better understanding of many aspects of Schrödinger’s books. The intellectual coherence of the entire trilogy is also reflected in Václav Pačes’s afterword, which provides a concise overview of the birth and development of molecular genetics from the 1940s to the present day, shedding light on Schrödinger’s influence on molecular biology research. The book is published in a translation by Martin Černohorský and Marie Fojtíková, with minor adjustments made during the revision of the translation of the first edition.