Jacques Monod (1910-1976) was a French biologist who discovered messenger RNA, a crucial factor in the functioning of the cell.

Jacques Lucien Monod was born in Paris, France, on February 10, 1910. He spent most of his youth in Cannes, in the south of France, where he went to high school. He developed an interest in biology from his father, who was an avid reader of Darwin. In 1928 he went to Paris to pursue a college education at the Faculte des Sciences of the University of Paris. He received a Bachelor's degree in natural science in 1931, at which time he obtained a fellowship to work with Edouard Chatton at the University of Strasbourg. He was engaged in research on the evolution of life from 1932 to 1934, when he was appointed assistant professor of zoology at the Faculte des Sciences.

In 1936 he obtained a Rockefeller fellowship to study genetics at the California...