Andre Lwoff
From Philosopedia
Lwoff, André Michel (8 May 1902 - 30 September 1994)
In 1965 Lwoff shared with Jacques Monod and François Jacob the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. The three were among the pioneers of modern molecular biology. They showed how some genes control the function of others in regulating the cell’s metabolism.
According to science editor Walter Sullivan, they found “that while one type of gene in the nucleus of a cell contains blueprints for the substances to be made, another type of gene regulates the rate of production of these substances.”
Lwoff joined the Pasteur Institute in 1921, and he studied the role of vitamins, finding that some function as vital aids to enzymes. He also studied viruses that infect bacteria, helping lay the basis for much of modern biology.
From 1959 to 1968 Dr. Lwoff, who earned doctorates in both medicine and science, taught microbiology at the Sorbonne.
Until 1972, he directed the Institute for Scientific Research on Cancer at Villejuif.
He was known, according to Le Monde, as an opponent of capital punishment but a lover of painting, music, sculpture, and “those things that awaken the spirit.”
Dr. Lwoff edited Origins of Molecular Biology (1979).
The son of parents of Hebrew lineage, a father who was a psychiatrist and a mother who was a sculptor, his family had fled czarist Russia.
Dr. Lwoff is a distinguished Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism.
