What is Life? Cambridge University Press, 1944. First Edition. Pp vii, 91. title lettered in gilt to spine. Neat ownership name to front free endpaper, otherwise a fine bright copy.

First printing of this landmark publication by Schrodinger, based on lectures he gave at Trinity College, Dublin in February 1943.

The book is written for a non-professional audience, and attempts to answer the question: “how can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?”

After he had been exiled from Austria during the Second World War Schrödinger had been personally invited to settle in Ireland by Taoiseach Éamon de Valera to help establish the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. In February 1943, Trinity hosted Schrödinger’s famous What Is Life? public lectures, the first of which were attended by De Valera (with his Cabinet in tow) and church leaders. He returned to his beloved Austria in 1956.