# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/francois-jacob
# Generated: 2026-08-31T13:50:03.446Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/francois-jacob"
name: "François Jacob"
slug: "francois-jacob"
description: "He cracked how cells decide which genes to switch on — the elegant control logic underneath all life. A Nobel laureate who explained transcription regulation with Jacques Monod, and a decorated Resistance fighter before he ever touched a pipette."
tagline: "French biologist and geneticist, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1965"
image: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Fran%C3%A7ois_Jacob_nobel.jpg"
gender: "male"
country:
  name: "France"
  isoCode: "FR"
category:
  name: "Academics"
  slug: "academics"
profileType:
  name: "Academic"
  slug: "academic"
  entityType: "https://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q39631"
birthDate: "1920-06-17"
deathDate: "2013-04-20"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           55.7
  momentum:             0
  historical:           24.096552
  currentAttention:     3.535714285714286
  sourceConfidence:     60
  profileCompleteness:  70
  trendDirection:       "STABLE"
ranks:
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  country:  null
  category: null
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  - name: "France"
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# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  François Jacob was born on 17 June 1920. He fought in the French Resistance during World War II, earning the Cross of Liberation, the Légion d'honneur, and Croix de guerre. After the war he turned to biology. Working with Jacques Monod, he discovered that cells regulate enzyme production by controlling transcription — the moment DNA is read into RNA — a principle that holds across all living things. In 1965 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Monod and André Lwoff for discoveries on genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. He later wrote for general readers and in 1994 won the first Lewis Thomas Prize. He died on 19 April 2013.