The logic of life : a history of heredity. The possible and the actual / François Jacob ; translated by Betty E. Spillmann.

  • Jacob, François, 1920-2013.
Date:
1989
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The logic of life : a history of heredity. The possible and the actual / François Jacob ; translated by Betty E. Spillmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PEREGRINE BOOKS THE LOGIC OF LIFE François Jacob, a Nobel prize winning scientist, was born in 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 he left France to join the Free French Forces in London. He fought with the Allies in northern Africa where he was severely wounded. For his war service he was awarded the Cross of the Liberation, one of France’s highest decorations. After the war, François Jacob finished his medical studies, com pleting his doctorate in 1947. Unable to practise surgery because of his war injuries he worked in various fields before turning to biology. In 1950 he entered André Lwoff’s laboratory at the Institut Pasteur. He obtained his doctorate in science in 1954 at the Sorbonne. Two years later he was appointed Laboratory Director of the Institut Pasteur and in i960 was made head of the Depart ment of Cell Genetics. In 1982 he became President of the Institut. In 1964 he was also appointed Professor of Cell Genetics at the Collège de France. François Jacob is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the American Philo sophical Society, the Royal Society (London) and the Royal Academy of Medicine (Belgium). François Jacob has worked mainly on the genetic mechanism of bacteria and bacterial viruses, on the information transfer and regulatory system in the bacterial cell. In 1965 he was joint winner, with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod, of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.