Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger, a founder of quantum mechanics, gave public lectures in Dublin in 1943 published as What Is Life?, asking how heredity could be explained by physics and suggesting genetic information was stored in an aperiodic crystal. He did no lab biology himself, but the book inspired Francis Crick, James Watson and others to move into molecular biology. It is a rare case of a short book changing who studied a field.