Jacques Monod

French biologist and biochemist, Nobel laureate (1910-1976)

Jacques Lucien Monod (9 February 191031 May 1976) was a French biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and Andre Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis".

Jacques Monod, 1965

Quotes edit

  • Where then shall we find the source of truth and the moral inspiration for a really scientific socialist humanism, if not in the sources of science itself, in the ethic upon which knowledge is founded, and which by free choice makes knowledge the supreme value - the measure and warrant for all other values? An ethic which bases moral responsibility upon the very freedom of that axiomatic choice. Accepted as the foundation for social and political institutions, hence as the measure of their authenticity, their value, only the ethic of knowledge could lead to socialism. It prescribes institutions dedicated to the defence, the extension, the enrichment of the transcendent kingdom of ideas, of knowledge, and of creation - a kingdom which is within man, where progressively freed both from material constraints and from the deceitful servitudes of animism, he could at last live authentically, protected by institutions which, seeing in him the subject of the kingdom and at the same time its creator, could be designed to serve him in his unique and precious essence. A utopia. Perhaps. But it is not an incoherent dream. It is an idea that owes its strength to its logical coherence alone. It is the conclusion to which the search for authenticity necessarily leads. The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.
    • 'Chance and Necessity: on the natural philosophy of modern biology', 1970, translation from the original French by Austryn Wainhouse.
  • A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.
    • Monod (1974) On the Molecular Theory of Evolution
  • What I consider completely sterile is the attitude, for instance, of Bertalanffy who is going around and jumping around for years saying that all the analytical science and molecular biology doesn’t really get to interesting results; let’s talk in terms of general systems theory ... there cannot be anything such as general systems theory, it’s impossible. Or, if it existed, it would be meaningless.

From enzymatic adaptation to allosteric transitions (1965) edit

From enzymatic adaptation to allosteric transitions. Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1965
  • One day, almost exactly 25 years ago - it was at the beginning of the bleak winter of 1940 - I entered André Lwoff’s office at the Pasteur Institute. I wanted to discuss with him some of the rather surprising observations I had recently made.
    I was working then at the old Sorbonne, in an ancient laboratory that opened on a gallery full of stuffed monkeys. Demobilized in August in the Free Zone after the disaster of 1940, I had succeeded in locating my family living in the Northern Zone and had resumed my work with desperate eagerness. I interrupted work from time to time only to help circulate the first clandestine tracts. I wanted to complete as quickly as possible my doctoral dissertation, which, under the strongly biometric influence of Georges Teissier, I had devoted to the study of the kinetics of bacterial growth. Having determined the constants of growth in the presence of different carbohydrates, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to determine the same constants in paired mixtures of carbohydrates From the first experiment on, I noticed that, whereas the growth was kinetically normal in the presence of certain mixtures (that is, it exhibited a single exponential phase), two complete growth cycles could be observed in other carbohydrate mixtures, these cycles consisting of two exponential phases separated by a-complete cessation of growth.
    • Introduction

Quotes about Jacques Monod edit

  • We might begin with Jacques Monod. Monod was a great figure whose scientific work I much admire, and was, essentially, the creator of modern molecular biology. His reflections on ethics, however, were of a different quality. (...) Monod's conclusions stem from his opinion that the only other possible way to account for the origin of morals - apart from ascribing them to human invention - is by animistic or anthropomorphic accounts such as are given in many religions. And it is indeed true that 'for mankind as a whole all religions have been intertwined with the anthropomorphic view of the deity as a father, friend or potentate to whom men must do service, pray, etc.' (M. R. Cohen, 1931:112). This aspect of religion I can as little accept as can Monod and the majority of natural scientists. It seems to me to lower something far beyond our comprehension to the level of a slightly superior manlike mind.
    • Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988), Ch. 4: The Revolt of Instinct and Reason
  • Jacques Monod... published a paper entitled "Genetic Regulatory Mechanisms in the Synthesis of Protein." Using bacteria as a model system, they made the remarkable discovery that genes can be regulated—that is, they can be switched on and off like a water faucet.
  • Jacob and Monod found that in bacteria, genes are switched on and off by other genes. This led them to distinguish between effector genes and regulatory genes. Effector genes encode effector proteins... which mediate specific cellular functions. Regulatory genes encode proteins called regulatory proteins, which switch the effector genes on or off.
    • Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006)
  • Jacob and Monod not only outlined a theory of gene regulation, they also discovered the first regulators of gene transcription. These regulators come in two forms—repressors, genes that encode the regulatory proteins that shut genes off, and as later work showed, activators, genes that encode the regulatory proteins that turn genes on.
    • Eric Kandel, In Search of Memory (2006)
  • In the Jacob-Monod model, signals from a cell's environment activate regulatory proteins that switch on the genes encoding particular proteins. This led [Philip] Goelet and me to wonder whether the crucial step in switching on long-term memory in sensitization might involve similar signals and similar gene regulatory proteins.

External links edit

 
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