Personajes históricos: François Jacob (parte dos)

(previosly...)

He wanted to be a doctor to open a surgery office. He married Lise. Then, he decided to become a biologist. He tried to get a job for a time but he couldn't find any employment. In 1950 he interviewed with André Lwoff for three times and finally Lwoff said: "yoy know, we have just found the prophage induction". He continued: "do you want to work with the phage?" Then Jacob replied: "yes, this is the only thing I wished". In September of that year he began working under Lwoff's orders in the Pasteur institute. He soon realized that he should have learnt english. As he was a beginner in biology, he had to study two subjects , genetics and biochemistry. Jacques Monod was studying a concrete enzime in a bacterium, a protein called beta-galactosidase. This bacterium only produced the beta-galactosidase enzime when there was lactose in the Petri plaque. françois Jacob had four children. As it was a genetics problem, one of them was black haired, two others were brown haired and the last was blonde. François Jacob and Jacques Monod discovered genetics control of synthesis of the enzimes and viruses. They studied specifically the genetics expression blocking in the beta-galactosidase gen of bacterium. In this epoch the DNA -and not the proteins- was already known to be the genetical hereditary material. Also, after the Francis Crick and James Watson experiments, the DNA double helix structure was found out. In 1960 François Jacob was appointed chief of the Celular Genetics Service. The famous article about genes activity in the bacterian cell belongs to this year. In those days, François Jacob had published approximately more than one hundred and twenty scientifical issues. October, 1965 he was awarded (together with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff) the Nobel Prize for Physiology. François Jacob is the author of therre books. His last work, published in 1987 is an autobiography called 'The inner statue' ("La statue interieure"). The book was published in Spain by Tusquest Editores. Nowadays, he is a teacher of Genetics in the "College de France" and director of research in the Pasteur Institute of Paris. Jacob has been many times awarded with the Doctor Honoris Causa title; for example, he received this honour in Barcelona University in March, 10th, 1982.

This original work was written in 1995.