From that viewpoint of all of chemistry and biology is just a consequence of theoretical physics. A lot of the 'consequences' of physics are very surprising and not at all obvious from the fundamental equations. There's a great paper you might want to read:

https://www.tkm.kit.edu/downloads/TKM1_2011_more_is_differen...

He also won a Nobel by the way.

Many great discoveries follow from new instrumentation leading to better and novel data, and less often some conceptual leap. This is why the genius of Einstein is all the more remarkable in coming up with relativity. Interestingly, he got his Nobel for something else :)