François Jacob

About François Jacob

Who is it?: Biologist
Birth Day: June 17, 1920
Birth Place: Nancy, France, French
Died On: 19 April 2013(2013-04-19) (aged 92)\nParis, France
Birth Sign: Cancer
Citizenship: French
Alma mater: University of Paris
Known for: Operon
Spouse(s): Lise Bloch (4 children) Geneviève Barrier (m. 1999)
Awards: Grand Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer (1962) Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1965) ForMemRS (1973) Sir Hans Krebs Medal (1982)

François Jacob Net Worth

François Jacob was born on June 17, 1920 in Nancy, France, French, is Biologist. François Jacob was a French biologist who was awarded the ‘Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine’ in 1965 along with another French biologist Jacques Monod and French microbiologist Andre Lwoff for their discoveries regarding genetic control of enzyme and synthesis of virus. Jacob made many significant contributions in the field of genetics by successfully collaborating with other noted scientists like Monod and Lwoff while serving the renowned ‘Pasteur Institute’ of France. His most remarkable finding was recognizing the regulator genes that regulate the activities of the structural genes. He is also known for the Jacob-Monod operon model that helps in elucidating the way genes are controlled. They elucidated on the effects of balance and imbalance between regulator genes and structural genes in a normal cell. They also examined messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which convey genetic information from the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) – carrier of genetic instructions to the ribosome – the protein synthesizer of the cell. He showed that similar standards with regard to natural preference and evolution are followed by bacteria as done by other higher organisms. He was awarded ‘Grand Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer’ in 1962 by ‘Académie des Sciences’. In 1973 he was elected as a ‘Foreign Member of the Royal Society’ (‘ForMemRS’).
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💰 Net worth: Under Review

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Biography/Timeline

1934

Jacob was born the only child of Simon, a merchant, and Thérèse (Franck) Jacob, in Nancy, France. An inquisitive child, he learned to read at a young age. Albert Franck, Jacob's maternal grandfather, a four-star general, was Jacob's childhood role model. At seven he entered the Lycée Carnot, where he was schooled for the next ten years; in his autobiography he describes his impression of it: "a cage". He was antagonized by rightist youth at the Lycée Carnot around 1934. He describes his Father as a "conformist in religion", while his mother and other family members important in his childhood were secular Jews; shortly after his bar mitzvah he became an atheist.

1944

During the German occupation of France—and on the heels of his mother's death—Jacob left France for Great Britain to join the war effort. Jacob, who had only completed his second year of medical studies, joined the medical company of the French 2nd Armored Division in 1940. He was injured in a German air attack in 1944 and returned to now-liberated Paris in on 1 August 1944. For his wartime Service, he was awarded France's WWII highest decoration for valor, the Cross of Liberation, as well as Légion d'honneur and croix de guerre.

1947

After his recovery, Jacob returned to medical school and began researching tyrothricin and learning the methods of bacteriology in the process. He completed a thesis he described as "replicating American work" on the effectiveness of the antibiotic against local infections, and became a medical Doctor in 1947. Though attracted to research as a career, he was discouraged by his own perceived ignorance after attending a microbiology congress that summer. Instead he took a position at the Cabanel Center, where he had done his thesis research; his new work entailed the manufacture of antibiotic, tyrothricin. Later, the center was contracted to convert gunpowder factories for penicillin production (though this proved impossible).

1961

In 1961 Jacob and Monod explored the idea that the control of enzyme expression levels in cells is a result of regulation of transcription of DNA sequences. Their experiments and ideas gave impetus to the emerging field of molecular developmental biology, and of transcriptional regulation in particular.

1999

Also in this period, he met and began courting his Future wife, Lise Bloch. Jacob remarried in 1999 to Geneviève Barrier.