Jacques Monod

In 1938 Monod married Odette Bruhl, an archaeologist who later became the curator of the ‘Guimet Museum’.

In 1939 their twin sons, Philippe and Olivier were born. Though Monod never influenced his children to pursue science, one of his sons became a geologist while the other became a physicist.

Apart from being a biologist he was a gifted musician and his favourite pastimes included music and sailing.

He was born on February 9, 1910, in Paris, to Lucien Monod and his wife Charlotte (Sharlie) MacGregor Todd. His father, a French Huguenot, was a painter and his mother was an American from Milwaukee.

He was intellectually and artistically inspired by his father, who was an avid reader of Darwin and probably this infused an interest in little Jacob in the field of biology.

In his childhood he used to involve himself in several activities including rock climbing, searching for fossils, sailing yachts and dissecting cats.

He completed his secondary education from the lycée de Cannes and thereafter in October 1928 he enrolled at the ‘Faculte des Sciences’ at the ‘University of Paris’ (‘Sorbonne’) to study natural sciences.

In 1931 he earned his Science Degree and began to pursue a Ph.D. He received a fellowship to work at the ‘University of Strasbourg’ with French biologist Edouard Chatton.

Monod was a political activist and played an active role in the ‘French Resistance’ during the ‘Second World War’. In course of time he became the chief of staff of operations for the ‘French Forces of the Interior’. In pursuit of Allied landings, he made arrangements for mail interceptions, bombing railroads and also dropping of weapons through parachute.

Post liberation he was inducted in the renowned ‘Pasteur Institute’ of France as Laboratory Director in the department of Andre Lwoff. In 1954 he became the Director of the ‘Cell Biochemistry Department’.

During 1958 Monod, Jacob and American biochemist Arthur Beck Pardee were involved in an experiment which became famous as the ‘PaJaMo’. This experiment and later research revealed that commencement of protein synthesis from a gene can take place almost immediately as it enters an E.coli cell. Earlier theories regarding interpretation of genetic data into proteins were focused on ribosomes.

In 1959, he became a Professor of the Chemistry of Metabolism at the ‘University of Paris’ (‘Sorbonne’), where he was once a student.

In 1961 Monod and Jacob worked on the mechanics responsible for genetic data transfer and the controlling pathways that exist in bacterial cell that control the activities and synthesis of macromolecules. These experiments led to a new theory of an existence of another species of RNA, which is the messenger RNA (mRNA).

He was awarded the ‘Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine’ in 1965 together with François Jacob and Andre Lwoff.