François Jacob

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 19…