Jacques Monod (9 February 1910-31 May 1976) was a French philosopher and biochemist who, along with Francois Jacob, won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on enzymes, and published Chance and Necessity in 1971, arguing that chance is why certain organisms are selected for, while others are not. He explored the philosophical implications of modern biology, appropriate for a nontechnical audience, and he acknowledged his connection to the French extistentialists in the work, quoting the final paragraphs of Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus ("The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.").
Biography[]
Jacques Monod was born in Paris, France in 1910, and he was a student of Thomas Hunt Morgan at the California Institute of Technology's drosophilia laboratory. During World War II, he served as a political activist for the French Resistance, arranging parachute drops of weapons, railroad bombings, and mail interceptions. In 1965, he and Francois Jacob won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis. He died in Cannes in 1976 at the age of 66.