What IS LIFE? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell

What IS LIFE? - The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell (生命とは何か？)
Erwin Schroedinger
ISBN 978-4004160809

I majored in elementary particle physics theory when I was a graduate student, and so in those days I worked on various kinds of Shroedinger's equations. Needless to say, Shroedinger is one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century as Landau awarded him as rank 1.

But, I didn't know that he left a monument in also biology especially in study on the definition of life and on the origin of life.

First of all, he defined a life as an entity which eats Negative Entropy.
This was a revolutionary new idea with deep insight and influenced bio science world greatly.
Second, he discussed the nature of genetic material and expressed that as "acyclic crystal" more than 10 years before Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA.

Really, amazing...