Schrödinger was an outstanding thinker who helped to revolutionise 20th century physics with his theory of wave mechanics and who laid the foundations for molecular biology. On the invitation of de Valera, he arrived in Dublin in 1939. As Director of the School of Theoretical Physics in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), he spent several year pondering the nature of life. His set of public lectures on this topic (1943) were published as the celebrated text "What is Life", which has stayed in print ever since.