| 1 | Name: | Professor François Jacob | |
| Institution: | Collège de France & Institut Pasteur | ||
| Year Elected: | 1969 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 201. Molecular Biology and Biochemistry | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1920 | ||
| Death Date: | April 19, 2013 | ||
French geneticist François Jacob, in close association with Jacques Monod, conducted groundbreaking research on genetic replication, transcription and translation in bacteria. They originated the idea that control of enzyme levels in all cells happens through feedback on transcription, and also proposed the existence of an RNA messenger, a partial copy of the gene substance deoxyribonucleic acid that carries genetic information to other parts of the cell. For his work concerning regulatory activities in bacteria, Dr. Jacob, together with Monod and Andres Lwoff, was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine. After earning his D. Sci. from Faculty of Science, Paris in 1954, Dr. Jacob served as research assistant at the Pasteur Institute. In 1960 he became head of the department of cellular genetics there, and in 1965 he was named Professor of Cellular Genetics at the Collège de France. He was Professor Emeritus at both institutions at the time of his death on April 19 at the age of 92 in Paris. Dr. Jacob had been awarded several French scientific prizes, including the Charles Leopold Mayer Prize of the Academy of Sciences (1962), and he was foreign member of both the Academie Royale des Lettres et Sciences du Danemark (1962) and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1964). He was elected a member of the Academie Française in 1996. Dr. Jacob is also the author of an autobiography, The Statue Within, which was published in France in 1987 and translated into English a year later. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1969. | |||