What Is Life? published in 1944. At that time DNA was not yet accepted as the carrier of hereditary information, which only was the case after the Hershey–Chase experiment of 1952. One of the most successful branches of physics at this time was statistical physics, and quantum mechanics, a theory which is also very statistical in its nature. Schrödinger himself is one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. Max Delbrück's thinking about the physical basis of life was an important influence on Schrödinger. However, long before the publication of "What is Life?", geneticist and 1946 Nobel-prize winner H. J. Muller had in
Deflection (physics) interaction, some energy must be converted into alternative forms of energy or is absorbed by the deformation of the objects involved in the collision. Deflection (physics) A deflection, in physics, refers to the change in an object's velocity as a consequence of contact (collision) with a surface or the influence of a field. Examples of the former include a ball bouncing off the ground or a bat; examples of the latter include a beam of electrons used to produce a picture, or the relativistic bending of light due to gravity. An object's deflective efficiency can never equal or surpass 100%,