Obituary
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Obituary
Andr6 Lwoff, 92, biologist, dies; shared Nobel for study of cells* Andr6 Lwoff, who with two colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine, died in Paris on Friday at the age of 92, according to that institution. He was the sole survivor of those who shared the prize, the others being Dr. Francois Jacob and Dr. Jacques Monod. The three Frenchmen were among the pioneers of modern molecular biology, showing, for example, how some genes control the function of others in regulating the cell's metabolism. Dr. Lwoff was born in 1902 in Ainay-le-Ch~teau, near Vichy, the spa in the Massif Central. His father, a psychiatrist, and his mother, a sculptor, had both fled czarist Russia. In 1921 he joined the Pasteur Institute and during the 1930's studied in Heidelberg, Germany, and Cambridge, England, receiving a Rockefeller Foundation grant for biochemical research in Germany. He earned doctorates in both medicine and science. tte studied the role of vitamins and found that some function as vital aids to enzymes. He also embarked on a major project, the study of viruses that infect bacteria. It was the study of these relatively simple biological processes that laid the basis for much of modern biology. In searching for the manner in which the genetic code is transcribed and read, Dr. Lwoff was joined at the Pasteur Institute by Dr. Monod and Dr. Jacob. In 1938 he created within that institute a division of microbial physiology known as "Le Grenier" - the attic. Visitors flocked to Le Grenier from the United States and other countries. In France, however, the scientific establishment tended to ignore him, since he lacked a link with one of the more prestigious institutions. During the German occupation Le Grenier went into eclipse. Dr. Lwoff and Dr. Monod fought in the French underground, Dr. Lwoff becoming an officer of the Legion of Honor. When his research division became active again after the war, the three researches completed the work that later won them the Nobel Prize. They found that while one type of gene in the nucleus of a cell contains blueprints for the substances to be made, another type of gene regulates the rate of production of these substances. From 1959 to 1968 Dr. Lwoff was also a professor of microbiology at the Sorbonne. He left the Pasteur Institute to direct the Institute for Scientific Research on Cancer at nearby Villejuif, a post he held until 1972. * ReprintedfromThe New York Times, Tuesday,October4, 1994.
Virology Division News
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In yesterday's issue of the newspaper Le Monde a colleague, Dr. Claudine EscoffierLambiotte, wrote of Dr. Lwoff's many passions, of his opposition to capital punishment and love a painting, music, sculpture and "those things that awaken the spirit". Sometimes Dr. Lwoff evoked the hostility of peers, Dr. Escoffier-Lambiotte said, because of his "total absence from conformity and diplomacy, plus the way he fought for justice". His wife, Marguerite Bourdaleix, died earlier. There are no
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