French biologist François JACOB, who won the 1965 Nobel prize for medicine for his research into enzymes, has died at the age of 92.
JACOB, a member of the prestigious “Ordre de la Liberation” awarded to those who performed heroic deeds during the liberation of France in World War II, died on Friday.
He won the Nobel prize jointly with colleagues from Institut Pasteur Andre LWOFF and Jacques MONOD “for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis.”
His work dealt mainly with the genetic mechanisms in bacteria and he held several prestigious fellowships and received a raft of honorary degrees from around the world.
He also wrote about Science and published in 1970 his book “The Logic of Life”. On November 11, 2012 the new Institut Pasteur research centre for the study of emerging diseases named François JACOB Centre was inaugurated by French President François HOLLANDE.
JACOB was expected to be commemorated at a military ceremony on Wednesday at Paris’s Les Invalides military monument.
