Nobel Laureate in Medicine, 1965

François Jacob was born in June 1920 in Nancy (France). After attending the Lycée Carnot in Paris, he began studying medicine at the Faculty of Paris, with the intention of becoming a surgeon. These studies were interrupted by the war. In June 1940, when in his second year of medicine, he left France and joined the Free French Forces in London. He was sent to Africa as a medical officer and saw action in Fezzan, Libya, Tripolitania and Tunisia where he was wounded. He was posted to the second Armoured Division and was severely wounded in Normandy, in August 1944. He is Compagnon de la Libération and Grand Croix de la Légion d'honneur.

After the war, François Jacob completed his medical studies and submitted his doctoral thesis in Paris in 1947. He was unable to practice surgery on account of his injuries and worked in various fields before turning to biology. He obtained a science degree in 1951 and then a doctorate in science in 1954 at the Sorbonne.

In 1950 François Jacob joined the Institut Pasteur under Dr. André Lwoff. He was appointed Laboratory Director in 1956, then Head of the Department of Cell Genetics in 1960. In 1964 he was also appointed Professor of Cell Genetics at the Collège de France. He has been Chairman of the Board of the Institut Pasteur from 1982 to 1988.

François Jacob has worked mainly on the following subjects: study of genetic mechanisms in bacteria and bacteriophages; analysis of bacterial conjugation; analysis of gene expression and its regulation; notions of messenger RNA, repressor, operon, replicon, allostery, episome, evolutionary tinkering. In the last years, he has been working mainly on mouse teratocarcinoma as a tool for the study of the mouse embryo.

He has published several books for a general readership: The Logic of Life: An History of Heredity (1970); The Possible and the Actual (1981); The Statue Within (1987) and Of Flies, Mice and Men (1997).

He has received several scientific prizes including the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1965 (jointly with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod). He is a member of the Académie Française and of the Académie des Sciences in Paris. He is a foreign member of several academies and Doctor honoris causa of many universities.