Jacques Monod

Jacques Lucien Monod was a French biochemist, born in Paris in 1910 and died in Cannes in 1976, who worked primarily at the Pasteur Institute in microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology. He is best known for his work on the lac operon and allosteric regulation, contributions that led him to be widely regarded as one of the founders of molecular biology, and he was among the first to suggest the existence of messenger RNA. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francois Jacob and Andre Lwoff for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. In 1970 he published Chance and Necessity, an influential examination of the philosophical implications of modern biology.