Peoples Archive is pleased to announce that the stories of François Jacob are now available on the site. Speaking in his native French, he talks in detail about his life and work. These stories are available to view with or without English subtitles.
François Jacob was born on the 17th of June 1920 in Nancy, France. After finishing his secondary studies at the Lycée Carnot, he began studying medicine at the Faculty of Paris, with the intention of becoming a surgeon. These were interrupted in 1940 by the Second World War and in June of that year, he escaped to England where he joined de Gaulle's Free French Forces. He served as Medical officer, posted to the Second Armoured Division, and saw action in North Africa and in Normandy.
Returning to Paris following the end of the war, Jacob was forced to abandon his dream of becoming a surgeon and after exploring a series of different paths, finally turned himself towards molecular biology, joining André Lwoff's group at the Pasteur Institute in 1950.
Over the years, François Jacob's work has mainly focussed on genetic mechanism existing in bacteria and bacteriophages, and on the biochemical effects of mutations; collaborating with Jacques Monod, Elie Wollman and Sydney Brenner among many.
In 1965, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod for their work in regulatory activities in bacteria and especially for their proposal of a mechanism for the regulation of the expression of genes. Most recently, François Jacob's work has turned towards the study of the early stage of the development of the embryo using mouse teratocarcinoma as a tool. His main goal is to analyse the regulatory circuits involved in development and cellular differentiation of the early embryo.
If you are already a Peoples Archive subscriber, we suggest the following stories as good places to start within the collection:
