Source: National Archives & Historic Records of French Republic
Science • Historical Archive • 🇫🇷 France • 0 views

André Lwoff 🇫🇷

André Michael Lwoff (Known as "André Lwoff")
Microbiologist, Free French Medalist, Nobel Prize in Medicine (1965), Prophage Pioneer
Born May 08, 1902 🇫🇷 Ainay-le-Château (Allier), France
Passed Away Sep 30, 1994 Paris, France
Lifespan 92 years old
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Notice / Correction
"A virus is a virus: neither a cell nor a living organism, but a piece of genetic news looking for an envelope."

Archival Overview

Distinguished French microbiologist of Russian-Polish descent who won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacob and Monod for discovering lysogeny and how bacteriophage viruses integrate into bacterial chromosomes as prophages.

Biographical Record

Joining the Pasteur Institute at age nineteen in 1921, Lwoff studied under Félix Mesnil. During World War II, he sheltered Allied airmen and resistance fighters in his laboratory at the institute, receiving the Resistance Medal and Legion of Honour.

In 1950, Lwoff solved the mystery of lysogeny: proving that a dormant virus (prophage) can integrate into the host bacterial genome, replicate harmlessly across generations, and be induced into active destruction by ultraviolet light. As head of the Cancer Research Institute at Villejuif, he laid the foundations of modern virology.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial
Montparnasse Cemetery
Paris, France
GPS: 48.8417, 2.3278
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