Nature Vol. 262 July 29 1976

obituary

Jacques Lucien Monod died at his
family home in Cannes on May 31,
1976 at the age of 66. He was one of
the foremost leaders of the revolution
in molecular biology, helping to lay the
framework of our understanding of
gene action and protein synthesis.
Monod was a scientist of the first rank,
both in his experimental work and in
his ideas. By his scientific research and
by his Essay on the Natural Philosophy
of Modern Biology (translated into
English as Chance and Necessity) he
has ,left an indelible mark on the in-
tellectual history of the 20th century.

Monod was born in Paris in 1910.
When he was seven his family moved
to Cannes where he lived and studied
till he was eighteen, so that he thought
of himself more a man of the Midi
than a Parisian. His father was a
painter, an unusual vocation at that
time for one of Huguenot stock, com-
ing from a family which had produced
many doctors, pastors, civil servants
and academics. His mother was Ameri-
can,  a native of Milwaukee, the
daughter of a New England mother
and a Scottish immigrant father. Early

influences were his father, who in
addition to his artistic sensibilities had
a strong interest in science and in
Darwin in particular; also his Greek
master, a scholar whom he admired
for his civil&d attitude to life. !Scien-
tifically, he acknowledged' among his
immediate elders the impact of George
Teissier, Andrd Lwoff, Boris Ephrussi
and Louis Rapkine. Perhaps most im-
portant of all was his year's stay, in
1936, with Morgan's group at Caltech.
Their full, free and critical discussions,
together with the easy personal re-
lationships between people of different
ages, were a revelation to him and
strongly influenced his style of organis-
ing research. `. .

In his scientific career Monod,
though never seriously impeded, did
not get off to a flying start as many
young men do nowadays. It was at the
beginning of the war, `after a famous
reply to Andre Lwoff ("L'adaptation
enxymatique? Connais pas! ") that he
first became aware of the nature of the
phenomenon he was>. Istudying. Only
after the war, when he had- joined'the
Pasteur under Lwoff, did he -fully re-

429

cognise the depth of the problem which
was to become his ,life's work. BY then
he was 37. But once having recognised
it, he pursued it with tenacity, versa-
tility and imagination. His logic was
relentless; his intuition variable but
profound. No wonder that many of his
younger colleagues came to feel that
to work with him was a scientific edu-
cation in itself.
The results are now in every text-
book. There is no space here to follow
the story in all its details, nor to show
how the commonplaces of today grew
out of the confusions of yesterday. The
concentration on 1B-galatosidase; the
arrival of Mel Cohn ("acquisition
prdcieuse") who knew about proteins
and aiso how to use the Tiselius
apparatus; the proof that the appear-
ance of enzyme activity represented de
novo synthesis (a big surprise at the
time); the skilful use of lactose anal-
ogues to separate the inductive from
the substrate activity and the discovery
of the permease and the transacetylase.
Finally the grand collaboration with
Francois Jacob (from the other end
of the corridor) leading to their im-
mensely skilful dissection of the in-
ductive process by genetics; the
realisation, from certain mutants, that
the synthesis of all three proteins
could be turned on and off together
(the operon); the postulate that the i
gene product was a protein-the in-
hibitor-and the famous PaJaMo ex-
periment of Pardee, Jacob and Monod
which suggested that the message was
unstable. It is ditBcult' now to recall
that at that time the ribosomal RNA
was assumed to be the message. The
realisation that the ribosome was a
reading head, which could read any
message, came as a great flash of
understanding. After that the road to
the genetic code was wide open.

Meanwhile Monod, with Jacob and
Changeux, had recognised that the
properties required for the inhibitor
were, at first sight, unusual for a
protein. On reflection, however, they
realised that such properties were in
fact common-their existence had
simply not been appreciated. Thus was
born the theory of allosterie. Various
earlier workers (including those study-
ing haemoglobin) had glimpsed the idea
but had not recognised its generality
and `its profound importance. For now
one could see how any metabolic path-
way could be linked, control-wise, to
any other: Without this type of mech-
anism even the simplest organisms


430

could not regulate themselves _ and-.:he. .:toyed with- a scheme, strongly

higher organisms could not exist.

In 1969 Monod gave the Robbins
Lectures at Pomona College in Cali-
fornia. He used the occasion to develop
and make precise his general ideas
about biology, man and society. The
lectures became a hook, originally
written in English, rewritten by.him in
French under the title L.e Hasard et la
N&essir& Its publication made a strong
impact and it became a best-seller. It
aroused the almost united opposition of
the French intellectual establishment
whioh has always preferred Marx,
Freud and Teilhard de Chardin to
Darwin and Mend& Written with
force and clarity, in an unmistakable
personal style, it presented a view of
the universe that to many lay readers
appeared strange,. sombre, arid and
austere..This is all the more surprising
since the central vision of life that it
projected is shared by the great
majority of working scientists of any
distinction. It would be difficult to find
a better example to display the deep
rift between science and the rest of our
culture.

Monod was not aloof from public
affairs. He was a persistent critic of
the French University system and of
the way in whioh French science was
supported. Thus it was not entirely
surprising that in 1971 he accepted the
invitation to become Director-General
of the Pasteur Institute. This decision
came partly from his strong sense of
duty; he was naturally reluctant to
have to give up his research and his
writing, but the Institute was in a had
way, having become desperately short
of money. Monod threw himself whole-
heartedly into his new job. He tried
many things: appeals for funds, both
public and private; the setting up of a
production subsidiary with the aim to
exploit useful ideas from the research
side of the Institute; various economies
and a limited reduction of staff. Finally

opposed by many of his colleagues, to
move the laboratory outside Paris. But
t,he opposition to such a move was too
strong and the sums of money required
too great; only the government could
supply them, a source he somewhat
distrusted, as he feared for the Insti-
tute's independence. Looking back one
can see that the Pasteur had to change
and to change radically. It needed a
scientist of Monod's stature to make
the changes possible and reasonably
palatable.

Science was the dominant activity in
Monad's life but it was not the only
one. During the war he worked for the
French underground, receiving tecog-
nition for this perilous work from both
the French and the American govern-
ments. He became a keen mountaineer
only to give it up for sailing; the
characteristic mixtttre of discipline and
freedom appeated strongly to his
temperament. He would sail his 37'
boat single-handed or with the assist-
ance of a mere amateur. Having a wide
intellectual curiosity, he was remark-
ably well read, both in classical and
modem authors-Camus was a personal
friend. But his main passion outside
science was music. He both played
the cello and conducted. In his twenties
he even wondered whether to give up
soience for music, and all through his
life he tried to find time to make music
with his friends.

Monod was a man of great personal
charm. His English was perfect, though
simpler than his French. Thanks to his
good ear and his American mother, he
spoke it without any trace of the heavy
accent which most Frenchmen. find
difficult to discard. Good-looking,
though small of stature, he commanded
attention by his intelligence, his clarity,
his incisiveness and by the obvious
breadth and depth of his interests.
Never lacking in courage, he combined
a debonair manner and an impish sense

Nature Vol. 262 July 29 1976

of humour with a deep moral commit-
ment to any issue he regarded as funda-
mental. He had great warmth for his
friends and treated his students with
affection and candour, as if they were
members of his family. To others he
could be charming but somewhat more
remote. Though his creative powers
flowered most abundantly in his
scientific work he combined within
himself, in a natural harmony, the
scientist, the philosopher, the man of
action and the musician. He might well
have made a world reputation by con-
centrating on any one of these roles.
Such a range of gifts is rare. It is
fortunate for us that he chose science,
otherwise the development of molecular
biology would have been very different.

The formal outlines of Monod's
career will be recorded here only
briefly. He obtained his first degree in
1931 and his doctorate in 1941, both
from Paris. He joined the Pasteur
Instimte in 1945 as Chef de Labora-
toire, becoming Chef de Service in
1953, head of the department of
Cellular Biochemistry m 1954 and
Director-General in 1971.

His stay at Caltech in 1936 was sup-
ported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
While at the Pasteur he held a chair
at the University of Paris from 1959 to
1967, followed by a chair in Molecular
Biology at the College de France from
1967 to 1972. From 1962 onwards he
was a non-resident felalow of the Salk
Institute.

Monod received many honours, in-
cluding Foreign Membership of the
Royal Society and the US National
Academy, among others, and several
prizes, culminating in the award of the
Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medi-
cine in 1965 which he shared with
Lwoff and Jacob.

His wife, the former Odette Bruhl,
whom he married in 1938, died in 1972.
They had two sons, twins, who survive
him. Both are scientists.   F.H.C.C.