Amelie Bismuth Bilingual French-English Writer and Language Specialist

In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger, having spent two decades rebuilding physics around the equation that bears his name, published a slim book whose title fitted into three words: What is Life? (Schrödinger, 1944). The question was not rhetorical. Quantum theory had redefined what an atom, a measurement, a particle were. Schrödinger asked whether these new laws had anything to say about the laws of the living, or whether the cell remained a classical object indifferent to the revolution that had just overturned inert matter. Eighty years on, the question is not settled. It has grown sharper, it has received partial and solid answers, and it has also bred a grey zone where enthusiasm regularly outruns what the data permit. This series takes the question seriously, which means holding its three faces together at once.