Memoirs of Monod

Date:
1977-1979
Reference:
PP/CRI/H/3/5/6
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Memoirs of Monod. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Origins of Molecular Biology SAILING WITH JACQUES Francis Crick I cannot remember for certain when I first met Jacques Monod. My recollection is that on my first trip to Paris after the war, during the period when I was work ing with Arthur Hughes at the Strangeways Laboratory, he and I visited the Pasteur Institut together, but to see Dervichian not Jacques. Nor, in 1949, when we were on our honeymoon (which was spent in Italy) did Odile and I pause for any sig nificant time in Paris, although we passed through it. I think my first meeting with Jacques was some years later in the mid 1950s probably after Jim Watson and I had put forward the DNA structure. I clearly recall giving a seminar at the Pasteur in which I suggested the quite erroneous theory that during protein syn thesis the inducer was needed to fold up the enzyme correctly. Without inducer, protein synthesis would come to a complete stop. Even at that time I didn't think much of this notion and I came to think even less of it, so it was never published. In those days things moved more slowly and there was less pressure to rush into print. I believe it was on this occasion (because I recall that there was a certain con straint between us) that I was with Jacques in his laboratory on a Saturday morn ing. You'll never guess what I'm trying, my dear, he said to me. (Jacques' English was practically perfect. This use of 'my dear' as the equivalent of 'mon cher' was the only slip I ever remember hearing him make.) He was at tempting, in a way that I cannot exactly recall, to see if he could get some sort Copyright © 1979 by Academic Press, Inc. J225l All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. ISBN 0-12-460480-3