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##### June 1, 1976 OBITUARY ## Jacques Monod, Nobel Biologist, Dies; Thought Existence Is Based on Chance ##### By FRANK J. PRIAL Jacques Monod, the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist and director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, died yesterday at his home in Cannes, France. He was 66 years old. Dr. Monod shared the 1965 Nobel award for medicine and physiology with two colleagues at the Pasteur Institute, Francois Jacob and Andre Lwoff, for research on the workings of the living cell. He was probably best known for his book-length essay, "Chance and Necessity," published in 1970. In it he postulated his chilling conviction that all existence is because of chance and that mankind's inevitable recognition of this fact will necessitate a complete revolution in human thought. "Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere," he wrote. "Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution. . . ." Although he flirted briefly with Communism during World War II, he was as harsh on Marxist dialecticians as on what he called the "disgusting farrago of Judeo-Christian religiosity." 'Postulate of Objectivity' "What I have tried to show," Dr. Monod told an interviewer in 1971, "is that the scientific attitude implies what I call the postulate of objectivity--that is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan, that there is no intention in the universe. "Now this," he went on, "is basically incompatible with virtually all the religious or metaphysical systems whatever, all of which try to show that there is some sort of harmony between man and the universe and that man is a product--predictable if not indispensable--of the evolution of the universe. "One of the great problems of philosophy," Dr. Monod said, "is the relationship between the realm of knowledge and the realm of values. Knowledge is what is; values are what ought to be. "I would say that all traditional philosophies up to and including Marxism have tried to derive the 'ought' from the 'is.' My point of view is that this is impossible, this is a farce." Dr. Monod maintained that the impossibility of deriving a set of values--the "ought" from blind happenstance, or the "is"--imposes on mankind the obligation to choose a system of values by which to live. But he thought mankind was failing to do so. "There is absolutely no doubt that the risk of the race committing suicide is very great," he said, adding, "In my opinion, the future of mankind is going to be decided within the next two generations." Dr. Monod said his own values were based on the existentialist ethics of his friend the late Albert Camus--"an ethics based on free choice"--and he denied that his intention was to create a philosophy of pessimism or despair. Hero of the Resistance Indeed, his own life belied the somber reflections his book--a best-seller in France in 1970 and 1971--engendered. A dapper, urbane man who played the cello and loved to sail, Jacques Lucien Monod was also a hero of the French Resistance. He held both the Croix de Guerre and the American Bronze Star. He was born in Paris in 1910, the son of Lucien Monod, a painter, and Charlotte Todd MacGregor Monod, a native of Milwaukee. He studied at the Cannes Lycee and the University of Paris and joined the Pasteur Institute as a zoology instructor in 1931. He was named head of the institute's laboratory in 1945, head of the department of cellular biochemistry in 1954 and director in 1971. Dr. Monod was a professor on the faculty of sciences at the University of Paris from 1959 to 1967 and a professor of molecular biology at the College de France from 1967 to 1972. He was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow in 1936, and was named a nonresident fellow of the Salk Institute in 1968. Americans Made Offers He was a frequent and open critic of the French Government for what he saw as its parsimonious treatment of scientific research, particularly of research at the Pasteur Institute. Just after winning the Nobel Prize in 1965, Professor Monod disclosed that most of his and his colleagues' research had been done "in a small, stuffy, sordid attic room," and he said that all three of them had earlier turned down a chance to move to the United States to work. "The Americans did not make this offer in order to deprive France of its researchers," he said at the time, "bout only through generosity to permit us to work in decent conditions with a maximum of efficiency." Dr. Monod could have moved to the United States with relative ease. He spoke English with almost no trace of an accent and he was already a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. Appealed for Support In 1973, Dr. Monod visited this country, in an attempt to save the Pasteur Institute from bankruptcy. He noted he had trimmed the staff, patented a new influenza vaccine in the name of the institute, and had appealed for both governmental and private support. The institute was founded by Louis Pasteur in 1888 with public donations including large grants from the Czar of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey and the Emperor of Brazil. Pasteur was buried there in 1895. Eight men who worked or studied there have won Nobel Prizes in medicine or physiology. The institute is divided into a research section and a pharmaceutical-manufacturing section that grosses more than $20 million in sales a year. After taking over in 1971, Dr. Monod dismissed more than 130 scientists and technicians, or about 10 percent of the staff. Dr. Monod, who acknowledged several years ago that running the Pasteur Institute gave him no time for his own research projects, was honored by the Nobel committee for showing how the living cell manufactures the substances of life. Control of Protein Manufacture With Professor Jacob, he demonstrated how the cell's production of proteins is controlled by a feedback process analogous to that by which a thermostat controls the temperature in a room. They found that while one type of gene in a cell's nucleus holds the blueprints for the substances to the manufactured, another gene regulates the rate of production, based on whether a given protein is in long or short supply. This is the mechanism that permits the required coordination of all the molecular manufacturing activities that are the essence of the metabolism and thus of life itself. Dr. Monod was a member of the Washington Academy of Science, the Royal Society of London and the Czechoslovak Academy of Science. His wife, the former Odette Bruhl, whom he married in 1938, died in 1972. Two sons survive.
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