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 Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid directions. Crick was thus in a unique position to make this interpretation because he had formerly worked on the X-ray diffraction data for other large molecules that had helical symmetry similar to that of DNA. Franklin, on the other hand, rejected the first molecular model building approach proposed by Crick and Watson: the first DNA model, which in 1952 Watson presented to her and to Wilkins in London, had an obviously incorrect structure with hydrated charged groups on the inside of the model, rather than on the outside. Watson explicitly admitted this in his book "The Double Helix". Molecular Structure