What Is Life? can be viewed as a well-reasoned theoretical prediction of what biologists should have been looking for during their search for genetic material. Both James D. Watson, and Francis Crick, who jointly proposed the double helix structure of DNA based on X-ray diffraction experiments by Rosalind Franklin, credited Schrödinger's book with presenting an early theoretical description of how the storage of genetic information would work, and each independently acknowledged the book as a source of inspiration for their initial researches. The book is based on lectures delivered under the auspices of the Institute at Trinity College, Dublin, in February 1943 and
Molecular models of DNA 1953. That same year, Maurice F. Wilkins, A. Stokes and H.R. Wilson, reported the first X-ray patterns of "in vivo" B-DNA in partially oriented salmon sperm heads. The development of the first correct double helix molecular model of DNA by Crick and Watson may not have been possible without the biochemical evidence for the nucleotide base-pairing ([A---T]; [C---G]), or Chargaff's rules. Although such initial studies of DNA structures with the help of molecular models were essentially static, their consequences for explaining the "in vivo" functions of DNA were significant in the areas of protein biosynthesis and the quasi-universality of the