You are stopped outside the building housing the Erwin Schrödinger Theatre. This lecture theatre was the site of Schrödinger’s famous “What is Life?” lecture series . The lectures took place here in 1943, during the war years.

The Act of Establishment of DIAS stipulates that each school should organise a public lecture at least once a year. Schrödinger was an erudite man and an excellent public speaker .The “What is Life?” lectures were extremely popular and each of the four lectures had to be repeated because the lecture theatre could not contain all of the interested public.

In these lectures Schrödinger set out the existing status of research in genetics and microbiology and argued on physical grounds that the genetic code should reside in a macromolecule, which he called an aperiodic crystal. His observations were a stimulus for James Watson and Francis Crick in their eventual discovery of the structure of DNA*, as witnessed by a letter written by Crick, archived in the Institute.

Apart from encouraging independent research by many scholars at the Institute, Schrödinger wrote papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics. He also wrote about a version of unified field theory, which he hoped would replace quantum mechanics. He never came to terms with the eventual formulation of quantum mechanics, even though he was one of the founding fathers of the subject.

He communicated with Einstein about this, since Einstein was equally unhappy with quantum mechanics in its final form as stated by the so-called Copenhagen School, headed by Niels Bohr. However, modern field theory is in fact based on essentially the same quantum mechanical principles.

The annual Schrödinger lecture, a public lecture in his honour, is given every year by an invited speaker, in this theatre. The lecture is subsidised by the Austrian Embassy.

+ Please Note: The grounds of Trinity College are currently closed to the public.+