an English biologist who, with J. D. Watson, discovered in 1953 the double-helical structure for DNA and its replication scheme. Crick and Watson subsequently suggested a general theory for the structure of small viruses; they shared the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine in 1962. Crick had been greatly influenced after reading What is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Schrödinger was interested in the idea of applying physics to the study of biology and proposed investigating genes at the molecular level, among other things in his book. This motivated Crick to switch his field from particle physics to biology.