Erwin Schrodinger’s highly influential booklet, What is Life? (1944), discussed the mystery of life and heredity in terms of molecular structure, atomic bonds, and the concept of “negative entropy.” The most important and influential part of this book was, however, his informational theory of genetic heredity. In his view, a gene’s action essentially consisted in storing and passing information. Schrdinger compared the role of chromosomes with that of code-script, and described chromosome structures as “law-code and executive power” or as “architect’s plan and builder’s craft” combined together. He also used a metaphor of the Morse code in telegraphy to explain how aperiodic crystals that consist in genes could store and then pass a great deal of information.Historians, as well as biologists, have discussed the influence of Schrdinger’s concept of genetic information upon the next generation of molecular biologists. However, it has scarcely been explored how he came up with this idea. His previous works on quantum physics, as well as his life and works in Ireland in the 1940s, was not apparently linked to the idea of “information” of any kind. In this paper, I will propose that Schrdinger was immensely influenced by the nineteenth-century German biologist Richard Semon’s works and ideas. In particular, Semon’s theory of “mneme”, with which Schrdinger had become acquainted in his youth, directly influenced him to devise the informational theory of gene. Today, the concept of a “meme” is usually considered to be born out of that of a gene. By showing Semon’s influence on Schrdinger, I will maintain that the concept of gene was made out of that of a meme (mneme), in effect reversing their relationship.