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Jean Weigle
François Jacob Scientist
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He's in a class of his own. Weigle was a physics lecturer in Geneva. He decided, when he was 40, that at 50 he would stop. That it was inconceivable for a physics lecturer to be older than 50 years old. So, he was stopping. And when he stopped he started travelling the world. He had money so he travelled. He ended up in Pasadena at Delbrück's laboratory. He was fascinated by phage and he started doing... he came back to Geneva with Lambda, K12 and everything else, all the gear. And he was very very friendly, he was a very warm guy, very nice. He died very early, soon after he started working on phage.

Ça c'était un personnage tout à fait à part. Weigle était prof de physique à Genève. Et il a décidé, quand il avait 40 ans, que à 50 ans, il arrêtait. Qu'un prof de physique de plus de cinquante ans, ce n'est pas pensable. Donc, il arrêtait. Et puis il a arrêté il a commencé à se promener dans le monde. Il avait de l'argent, alors il s'est promené. Et il a atterri un jour à Pasadena chez Delbrück. Il a été fasciné par le phage et il s'est mis à faire... Il est revenu à Genève avec Lambda, K12 et tout le fourbi, toute la panoplie. Et il était très très sympathique, c'était un type très chaleureux, très sympa. Il est mort très tôt. Il est mort très vite, très peu de temps après qu'il s'était mis au phage.

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 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'.

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.

Tags: Jean Weigle

Duration: 50 seconds

Date story recorded: October 2004

Date story went live: 24 January 2008