Related papers: Schr\"{o}dinger's "What is Life?" at 75
The esteemed physicist Erwin Schroedinger, whose name is associated with the most notorious equation of quantum mechanics, also wrote a brief essay entitled 'What is Life?', asking: 'How can the events in space and time which take place…
Schroedinger's book 'What is Life?' is widely credited for having played a crucial role in development of molecular and cellular biology. My essay revisits the issues raised by this book from the modern perspective of epigenetics and…
This is a set of lectures that I presented at the Les Houches 2014 Summer School "Topological Aspects in Condensed Matter Physics". The lectures are an introduction to physics of proteins. To physicists, and by a physicist. My lectures at…
We dwell upon the physicist's conception of `life' since Schroedinger and Wigner through to the modern-day language of living systems in the light of quantum information. We discuss some basic features of a living system such as ordinary…
The origins of life stands among the great open scientific questions of our time. While a number of proposals exist for possible starting points in the pathway from non-living to living matter, these have so far not achieved states of…
The question of "what is life?" has challenged scientists and philosophers for centuries, producing an array of definitions that reflect both the mystery of its emergence and the diversity of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear on the…
Schr\"odinger's cat is an iconic example for the problem of the transition from the microscopic quantum world to the macroscopic, classical one. It opened many interesting questions such as, could a macroscopic superposition like a dead and…
Erwin Schr\"odinger is famous for presenting his wave equation of motion that jump-started quantum mechanics. His disenchantment with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics led him to unveil the Schr\"odinger's cat paradox,…
This is my attempt to answer Schr\"odinger's question: "What is Life?". In living cell the local combination of atoms is reproduced with incredible accuracy. In the case of protein biosynthesis the notion of the physical aspect of the…
The most discussed of ``live'' metaphors in physical sciences is that of the Schr\"odinger cat. Introduced in the early, but mature days of the new quantum theory, in 1935, the parable of the cat has provoked and enlivened debates on the…
Now that we have reached the centennial of Erwin Schrodinger's seminal paper introducing the wavefunction theory of matter, it is right and proper to inquire as to its legacy. It is undeniable that today every paper in atomic physics cites…
The rapidly increasing interest in the quantum properties of living matter stimulates a discussion of the fundamental properties of life as well as quantum mechanics. In this discussion often concepts are used that originate in philosophy…
The theoretical biologist Robert Rosen developed a highly original approach for investigating the question "What is life?", the most fundamental problem of biology. Considering that Rosen made extensive use of mathematics it might seem…
The question whether quantum mechanics is complete and the nature of the transition between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics have intrigued physicists for decades. There have been many experimental breakthroughs in creating larger…
It is pointed out that Schr\"odinger's celebrated "cat" paradox contains a simple error in reasoning regarding the definition of life. It is then shown that there is no paradox in the context of life as we currently understand it.
What Quantum Brain Dynamics (QBD) considers is not just these other functions of the brain, this is because they can be well analyzed with the workings of classical mechanics (even though they still play host to a quantum description). It…
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
The oft-repeated claim that life is written into the laws of nature are examined and criticized. Arguments are given in favour of life spreading between near-neighbour planets in rocky impact ejecta (transpermia), but against panspermia,…
Erwin Schrodinger famously and presciently ascribed the vehicle transmitting the hereditary information underlying life to an `aperiodic crystal'. We compare and contrast this, only later discovered to be stored in the linear biomolecule…
The Universe contains everything that exists, including life. And all that exists, including life, obeys universal physical laws. Do those laws then give adequate foundations for a complete explanation of biological phenomena? We discuss…