1910-1976

French Geneticist

In 1965 Jacques Lucien Monod shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with François Jacob (1920- ) and André Lwoff (1902- ) for their contributions to discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of enzymes and viral synthesis. In 1961 Monod and Jacob proposed the concept of messenger RNA and the operon theory.

Monod was born in Paris. His father was a French artist and his mother was an American. Monod studied zoology at the Université de Paris (Sorbonne). He earned his B.Sc. in 1931 and his doctorate in 1941. In 1936 he worked in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) at Caltech. During World War II, Monod was involved in the French Resistance. He served as a professor at the Université de Paris until 1945, when he moved to the Pasteur Institute, where he spent the rest of his scientific career. He became head of the Department of...