In Memoriam: Jacques Monod (1910–1976)

Jacques Monod, born 100 years ago, was one of the main founders of molecular biology. A quotation of Roger Stanier seems to me of immediate relevance to the topic of this meeting on ‘‘Chance and necessity in evolution,’’ dedicated to the works of Jacques Monod: ‘‘Jacques Monod, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century, will always have an honored place among the leaders of the second major revolution in the history of biology, which occurred almost exactly 100 years after the Darwinian one. Few of the protagonists were more conscious than Monod of the connections between the two revolutions, of the way in which he and his contemporaries had extended and deepened Darwin’s concepts.’’ (Stanier 1977). I first heard of Jacques Monod in 1948, at the time of one of the greatest scientific scandals of the 20th century, the Lyssenko affair. Lyssenko was a Russian agronomist who rejected the science of genetics, whereas giving heredity of acquired characters the major role in evolution. He considered Mendel’s principles incompatible with dialectic materialism. He succeeded not only to ruin the Soviet agriculture but also to eliminate its best geneticists. At that time, I was a young student in science at the University of Budapest; teaching of genetics was not allowed. A friend who had gotten hold of a newspaper called ‘‘Combat,’’ directed by Albert Camus and dated September 19, 1948, showed me the article by a certain Dr Monod, the title of which was ‘‘The victory of Lyssenko has no scientific character.’’ To me this was a revelation. My decision was made: One day I would meet this Dr Monod. And 10 years later, after my thesis work was finished, I found myself working in his laboratory! From that time on I had the immense privilege of working with him on a day-to-day basis up until his death on May 31, 1976. Jacques Monod was born in Paris on February 9, 1910. During the years of the First World War, the Monod family, which was of Swiss Huguenot origin, fled to Switzerland to live with their cousins. In 1918, they moved to Cannes where Jacques was to remain until 1928. Lucien Monod, his father, was a painter, a rather audacious choice for someone from a puritanical family that counted among its members professors, civil servants, pastors, and doctors (fig. 1). Jacques Monod’s mother, Charlotte Todd McGregor, daughter of a Scottish pastor, who had emigrated to the United States, was an American. In the Monod family reigned a stimulating intellectual, artistic, and musical atmosphere. As a boy, Jacques learnt the cello that he would practice even later. After completing his secondary education in Cannes, Monod went to Paris in 1928 to study biology at the Sorbonne (the Paris University). In 1931, he obtained his bachelor’s degree (Licence) in science. At the same time, he created a Bach choral group, ‘‘La cantate’’ and was seriously tempted for a time to make a career as a conductor. He made his first research experience, after having obtained a grant, in Strasbourg in the laboratory of the zoologist Edouard Chatton, where he worked on ciliates. Back to Paris in 1932, at the Sorbonne in the ‘‘Laboratory of evolution of organized beings’’ he continued research on protists with more or less success. His true initiation to biology came from scientists he had met at the marine biology research station in Roscoff: Georges Tessier, from whom he learned biometrics, André Lwoff, and Boris Ephrussi, who introduced him into the world of microbiology and genetics and Louis Rapkine, who taught him the importance of chemical and molecular descriptions of living beings (Monod 1966). After several research projects on different protists, he decided in 1934 to join a scientific expedition in Greenland on Commander Charcot’s boat, the ‘‘Pourquoi pas?’’ to study the natural history of this region (fig. 2). In 1936, he was about to take part in a new expedition to Greenland. But Boris Ephrussi, who was to spend a year in T.H. Morgan’s group at the California Institute of Technology, persuaded Jacques Monod to go off with him to learn genetics, and he obtained for him a Rockefeller grant. Thus, Jacques Monod set off for Pasadena. That same year, the Pourquoi pas? was shipwrecked in a storm off the coast of Greenland and its entire crew perished. Genetics saved the life of Jacques Monod. Much to the regret of Ephrussi, he spent most of his time directing orchestras and choral groups and even got to the point where he was about to sign a contract as head of the local orchestra. Even upon returning to Paris, he This paper forms part of a Special Collection on Chance and Necessity in Evolution from a meeting in Ravello, Italy, October 2010