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For most of his scientific career, Jacques Monod appeared to be a man of a single problem: the formation of enzymes and the regulation of their properties. His ability to produce theoretical models led him to play a major role in both the discovery of the operon regulation and the model of allosteric transitions. The successes of Monod, from the 1950s to the Noble Prize (1965), are already well documented. In this paper, I will focus on the Monod before Monod, that is, the Monod who, during the 1940s, tried to explain the fundamental phenomenon of enzymatic adaptation. To begin with, however, I will survey how this phenomenon was discovered and explained by French Pasteurians at the very beginning of the twentieth century. This first explanation took place amidst an entrenched Lamarckian atmosphere in French thought, which was still alive during the 1920s and the 1930s, when Monod commenced the study of biology at the Sorbonne. Because of his will to construct a scientific biology free from teleology, Monod always tried to break from the legacy of this traditional background of Lamarckism, and he consequently developed ways of thinking that, in the main, were not part of the French biological tradition. Nevertheless, one point did link Monod to French history: his fruitful interactions with André Lwoff. As we shall see, these interactions were necessary for the development of Monod's science, both technically and intellectually speaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of Jacques Lucien Monod, a French biochemist, is presented. He was born on February 9, 1910 in Paris, France and studied basic sciences, including biology, chemistry, geology and zoology at Sorbonne. He then enrolled for fellowship at the California Institute of Technology (CIT), California, U.S. He married Odette Bruhl, an orientalist and had twin sons. His approach in molecular genetics is explored. He died on 31 May 1976 from viral hepatitis and aplastic anaemia.

Abstract: Between 1942 and 1956, Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology/Medicine, contributed a number of papers to the Annales de l’ Institut Pasteur, the ancestor of the journal “Research in Microbiology”. Circumstances that led him to publish in the “Annales” are recalled here. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]