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Reunited with my family

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Return to Paris
François Jacob Scientist
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Puis alors... alors là je suis revenu à Paris. Et j'ai trouvé l'atmosphère peu plaisante. Tous mes copains qui n'avaient pas bougé de Paris, qui avaient continué les concours d'externat, d'internat, qui étaient plus ou moins médecins des hopîtaux, venaient me voir avec un air impitoyable, en disant, 'Ah oui oui voilà le grand guerrier, très bien, continue!' C'était très, très désagréable.

[Q] Avec quand même une certaine admiration non, une jalousie disons, sans doute pour certain?

Je ne suis pas tellement sûr. Non j'avais des copains qui étaient si vous voulez mes concurrents en médecine les premières années, pour les concours, que je n'ai pas faits, puisque mon premier concours a été supprimé. Et eux étaient devenus déjà des personnages très importants de la médecine. Ce qui m'agaçait prodigieusement. Il y avait de quoi. Mais eux étaient plein de commisération, mais c'est tout.

[Q] Vous racontez que vous avez essayé de pouvoir avoir des examens accélérés, au moins avoir le droit de vous présenter plus tôt aux examens et qu'on vous l'a refusé.

Oui. Ça, c'est un truc qui m'a... Oui, parce que j'étais pas externe des hôpitaux. Et vous savez que dans le système français, il faut être externe pour être interne, etc. Donc, j'avais quatre ou cinq ans de retard sur ces gars là et j'ai demandé... Je suis allé à l'Assistance Publique. Et je leur ai demandé l'autorisation de me présenter à l'internat sans être externe. Et puis qu'on note mes copies, et c'est tout. Ils ont failli tomber de haut-mal. Se présenter à l'internat sans être externe, ce n'était pas pensable. Et ça m'a complètement écœuré, j'ai décidé de ne pas poursuivre dans cette voie et de faire autre chose.

[Q] Que vous ne feriez jamais médecine... Comme médecin... Vous l'avez fait pour avoir le diplôme, oui...

Je ne ferais jamais DE médecine. J'ai quand même un doctorat en médecine, mais sans médecine pratiquante oui.

And then... So I came back to Paris. And the atmosphere that I found there wasn't very pleasant. All my friends that had stayed in Paris, that had gone on with the extern exam, the intern exam, who were all more or less doctors, came to see me with pitiful looks, saying, 'Ah yes, here comes the glorious soldier, very good, continue!' It was very, very unpleasant.

[Q] With nonetheless a certain admiration wouldn't you say? No doubt, jealousy for some?

I'm not really sure. No, I had friends who were my competition, if you will, during the first years of medicine, for the exams that I didn't take, because my first exam had been cancelled. They had already become very important players in the world medicine. Which annoyed me tremendously. And there were good reasons. But they were full of commiseration, but that's all.

[Q] You say that you tried to get accelerated exams, or at least have the right to present yourself earlier to the exams, which you were denied.

Yes. That's something that... yes, because I wasn't an extern student at a teaching hospital. And you know that in the French system, you need to be an extern to become an intern, etc. So, I was four or five years behind these guys and I asked... I went to the office of the Assitance Publique. And I asked them for the right to present myself to be an intern without being an extern. And that my tests get marked and that's it. They almost fell to the ground. To present yourself to be an intern without being and extern, that was unthinkable. And that completely disgusted me, I decided not to continue in that direction and do something else.

[Q] That you would never practice medicine... As a doctor... You did it to get the diploma, yes...

That I would never PRACTICE medicine. I still got a doctorate in Medicine, but without practical medicine, yes.

François Jacob (1920-2013) was a French biochemist whose work has led to advances in the understanding of the ways in which genes are controlled. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Jacque Monod and André Lwoff, for his contribution to the field of biochemistry. His later work included studies on gene control and on embryogenesis. Besides the Nobel Prize, he also received the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 1996 and was elected a member of the French Academy in 1996.

Listeners: Michel Morange

Michel Morange est généticien et professeur à L'Université Paris VI ainsi qu'à l'Ecole Normale Supérieure où il dirige le Centre Cavaillès d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences. Après l'obtention d'une license en Biochimie ainsi que de deux Doctorats, l'un en Biochimie, l'autre en Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences, il rejoint le laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire dirigé par le Professeur François Jacob à l'Institut Pasteur. Ses principaux travaux de recherche se sont portés sur l'Histoire de la Biologie au XXème siècle, la naissance et le développement de la Biologie Moléculaire, ses transformations récentes et ses interactions avec les autres disciplines biologiques. Auteur de "La Part des Gènes" ainsi que de "Histoire de la Biologie Moléculaire", il est spécialiste de la structure, de la fonction et de l'ingénerie des protéines.

Michel Morange is a professor of Biology and Director of the Centre Cavaillès of History and Philosophy of Science at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. After having obtained a Bachelor in biochemistry and two PhDs, one in Biochemistry, the other in History and Philosophy of Science, he went on to join the research unit of Molecular Genetics headed by François Jacob, in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. Together with Olivier Bensaude, he discovered that Heat Shock Proteins are specifically expressed on the onset of the mouse zygotic genome activation. Since then he has been working on the properties of Heat Shock Proteins, their role in aggregation and on the regulation of expression of these proteins during mouse embryogenesis. He is the author of 'A History of Molecular Biology' and 'The Misunderstood Gene'.

Tags: doctor, exams, medicine, studies

Duration: 1 minute, 55 seconds

Date story recorded: October 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008