EncyclopediaJacob, François
Jacob, François (fräNswä' zhäkôb') [key], 1920–, French biologist, educated at the Sorbonne. His medical studies were interrupted by World War II. He joined the Free French Forces and fought in Africa and during the liberation of Paris. In 1950 he joined the Pasteur Institute, and in 1964 he became professor at the Collège de France. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with André Lwoff and Jacques Monod for work in genetics, especially his proposal, with Monod, of a mechanism for the regulation of the expression of genes. Jacob and Monod coined the term messenger RNA. Jacob's writings include The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (1974).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
