Genetics of the bacterial cell

If I find myself here today, sharing with Andre Lwoff and Jacques Monod this very great honor which is being bestowed upon us, it is undoubtedly because, when I entered research in 1950, I was fortunate enough to arrive at the right place at the right time. At the right place, because there, in the attics of the Pasteur Institute, a new discipline was emerging in an atmosphere of enthusiasm, lucid criticism, nonconformism, and friendship. At the right time, “oecause then biology was bubbling with activity, changing its ways of thinking, discovering in microorganisms a new and simple material, and drawing closer to physics and chemistry. A rare moment, in which ignorance could become a virtue.