Jacques Lucien Monod, 9 February 1910 - 31 May 1976

Abstract Jacques Lucien Monod was born in Paris on 9 February 1910. When he was seven, his family moved to Cannes. Jacques always felt himself more ‘Provençal’ than Parisian. The Monod family originated from a Swiss pastor who came from Geneva to France in 1808 and whose descendents now number several hundreds. Professors, civil servants, pastors and doctors have been the dominant products of this Huguenot family. Monod’s paternal grandfather was a general practitioner and his wife belonged to a protestant family from the Dauphiné. His father, Lucien Monod—born in 1867—was a painter, engraver and art historian. Lucien Monod’s watercolours, flowers, landscapes and portraits, reveal great sensitivity and talent. At the same time, he was a scholar with a lifelong and passionate interest in the Work of the -intellect. His admiration for Darwin was transmitted to his son; it was thus that Jacques became interested in biology. Moreover, Lucien Monod was a free thicker, imbued with a positivist faith in the joined progress of Science and Society. On the whole a remarkable exception in this puritan family.