In Memoriam of Prof. Jacques Signoret

Abstract

Professor Jacques Signoret died last July 2007 at the age of 75. He was a physicist, a naturalist, an eminent embryologist possessing an impressive knowledge and a distinguished teacher. His name has become internationally associated with “Transition Blastuleenne” (Blastulean Transition) which he defined for the first time in 1971 in the urodele Axolotl. Jacques Signoret started his scientific carrier in Paris, first in 1952 as Assistant Professor of Physics in Pr. Louis Leprince-Ringuet’s laboratory, then in 1954 as Assistant Professor of Embryology at the Paris University of Science under the leadership of Pr. Louis Gallien. Research fellowships from NATO allowed him to carry out two post-doctoral positions in the USA, first in 1959 at the California Institute of Technology in Albert Tyler’s laboratory and in 1960 at the Indiana University in Robert Briggs’s laboratory where he succeeded in performing for the first time nuclear transplantations in Axolotl. He came back to France in 1962, bringing back the Axolotl as a laboratory model and was appointed Professor of Embryology at the University of Caen where he taught until 1998.....(continued)