The Outer and The Inner Man

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Madeleine Brunerie’s experience with Jacques Monod in the Institut Pasteur. On June 29, 1954, in the reserve room for laboratory material of the old Service de Chimie Biologique, Jacques Monod appeared forever in the author’s life as a charming and very courteous man. The author first believed she would not be as impressed by him as she had been by Professor Macheboeuf. Sometime in late October 1959 she understood that her secret hopes might come true. A close friend of Jacques Monod asked the author for a curriculum vitae and reprints to support a proposal for a scientific prize to be shared with Andr´e Lwoff (in fact the Nobel Prize). The author felt it was a confirmation of her high opinion of him, and afterward, each fall, the author waited hopefully for Nobel news. He was also generous with people he did not even know. He never answered Christmas cards, but he never failed to reply to letters from troubled or ill people who asked him for moral help or medical advice. Not a physician himself, he always tried to give either the adequate information or the opinion from a specialist. On April 15, 1971, Jacques Monod became General Director of the Institut Pasteur. Accepting this leadership, he undertook it with the same passion he exerted in whatever he did. A few days later, on Monday, May 31, 1976, Jacques Monod died in Cannes, where he had gone for a rest.