Abir-Am - How Scientists View Their Heroes (Rapkine)

How Scientists View Their Heroes: Some Remarks on the Mechanism of Myth Construction
Author(s): Pnina G. Abir-Am

Source: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 281-315
Published by: Springer
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Essay Review: How Scientists View Their
Heroes: Some Remarks on the Mechanism of
Myth Construction
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
Institut d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des Sciences

Universite de Montreal
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3J7
Scientists generally do not like to read what outsiders have to say

about science, or so allege the authors of Laboratory Life, the first
anthropologically minded attempt to observe science as it is actually
practiced.' When a suitable opportunity arises, scientists prefer to write
about their science themselves. The compilation of anniversary or
memorial volumes dedicated to publicizing the career of successful
scientists offers just such an opportunity. It combines the official noble
goal of paying tribute to either influential living colleagues or the
notable dead with the less explicit interest of circulating a certified
conception of science. The latter interest becomes especially acute
when one school's conception of science, and its associated authority
and intellectual property rights, is contested by competing schools.
The prescription followed by the participants in these rites is to
describe their most significant piece of research, while emphasizing
their real or apparent link to the volume's hero. The latter's more
intimate associates may act as editors, gently guiding the authors
to converge in producing a proper image of their hero. Interspersed
recollections of a personal, often gossipy nature support the contrib-
utors' "bold" revelations that scientists too are after all human, not
entirely perfect, and thus have made their share of errors.
Like all rituals reported by "native" participants, anniversary or
memorial volumes dedicated to scientists display profound contradic-
tions for the careful reader. Indeed, the true social function of these
volume-rites is to reaffurm the underlying principles of social order in
science, and not to reflect the disorders and conflicts of scientists'
1. B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction

of Scientific Facts (London: Sage Publications, 1979). See also the oblique
preface to this volume by J. Salk, founder of the Salk Institute, where the authors
conducted their observations of science as it actually is. Another author-observer
of laboratory life, June Goodfield (An Inmgined World: A Story of Scientific
Discovery [New York: Harper & Row, 19811), has been fired since the publica-
tion of her book, which apparently displeased scientists in power.
Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1982), pp. 281-315.
0022-5010/82/0152/0281 $03.50.
Copyright ? 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
everyday life.2 This affirmation is usually enacted by a systematic

display of public consensus around key metaphors such as "discovery,"
"discipline," or specific concepts,3 while circulating an authoritative
view of a scientist-hero. It is the authentic life story of the scientist-
hero that enables people, especially novice scientists (upon whom the
reproduction of the enterprise of science so obviously depends), to
identify with and accept an ideal view of the otherwise abstract and
obscure workings of the social system of science.4
Jacques Monod's memorial volume, Origins of Molecular Biology: A
7Wibute to Jacques Monod, edited by Andre Lwoff and Agnes Ullmann
(New York: Academic Press, 1979), is the most recent and the most
interesting in a series of anniversary volumes, a genre that has gained
in popularity among molecular biologists ever since the mid-l 960s.5
Although obviously designed for practicing and would-be scientists,
these anniversary volumes are not without interest for historians,
sociologists, and philosophers of science. The main reason for this
interest is not the customary historical claims, composed by those
2. This interpretation is based on V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca,

N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1967), and his Dramas, Fields and Metaphors:
Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971).
Turner's analysis is based on classic anthropological material, but I feel that his
analysis is equally relevant to modern scientific material and its ritualistic dimen-
sions, as demonstrated in part below.
3. See for example the recent volume by P. R. Srinivasan, J. S. Fruton, and
J. T. Edsall, eds., 7he Origins of Modern Biochemistry: A Retrospect on Proteins
(New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1979); also my essay review in the
British Journal for the History of Science (in press), which analyzes the way the
discipline of biochemistry is built around empirical elaborations of the concept
of "proteins."
4. The social structure of science as described by sociologists, for example
J. R. Cole and S. Cole, Social Stratification in Science (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1973), and H. Zuckerman, Scientific Elite (New York: Free Press,
1977), regardless of its accuracy, is simply not comprehended by practicing
scientists. They tend to have their own view of science, informed primarily by an
ethos that projects a highly idealized perception of scientific careers.
5. For example, J. Cairns, G. S. Stent, and J. D. Watson, eds., Phage and the
Origins of Molecular Biology (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, 1966), dedicated to Max Delbruck's 60th anniversary; A. Rich and
N. Davidson, eds., Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biology (San Francisco:
Freeman, 1968), dedicated to Linus Pauling's 65th anniversary; J. Monod and
E. Borek, eds., Of Microbes and Life (New York: Columbia University Press,
1971), dedicated "to Andre Lwoff's for the fiftieth anniversary of his immersion
in biology." (Born in 1902, Lwoff began his biological research in 1921.)
282
Essay Review: How Scientists View Their Heroes
presiding over these events, usually tightly packaged in the title. Nor is
it the raw material provided by anecdotes, personal information, or
even insights into the scientists' "subculture," which such volumes
often provide in sharp contrast to the mostly dry, technical, and
impersonal style of scientific publications. These are all important
sources admittedly (especially when not taken at face value) for forming
an analytic understanding of science as a social and cultural system.6
However, this essay will claim that the real importance of collective
public representations of science by scientists lies not so much in their
content but in their systematic omissions. I shall focus in this essay on
uncovering these major omissions and shall suggest some of the mecha-
nisms via which they are functional in the construction, validation, and
circulation of myths in the history of science.7 This will be done while
6. For a naive use of the raw material provided by anniversary volumes see
N. Mullins, "The Development of a Scientific Specialty: The Phage Group and the
Origins of Molecular Biology," Minerva, 10 (1972), 51-82. Muffins' sociological
model is based on taking at face value the claims made by Cairns, Stent, and
Watson in Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology.
7. The following are particularly illuminating analyses of the systematic
distortion of scientific events in scientists' accounts of past scientific events:
D. Outram, "Scientific Biography and the Case of Georges Cuvier: With a Critical
Bibliography," Hist. Sci, 13 (1976), 101-137; idem, "The Language of Natural
Power: The 'Eloges' of Georges Cuvier and the Public Language of 19th Century
Science," Hist. ScL, 16 (1978), 153-178. G. Swain,Le sujet de la folie: Naissance
de la psychiatrie (Toulouse: Privat, 1977); F. J. Suloway, Freud, Biologist of
the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend (New York: Basic Books, 1979).
However, the theoretical dimensions of myth construction in the history of
science have hardly been explored. Thus, although Outram, Swain, and Suloway
have demonstrated convincingly the existence of systematic distortion in the
historical records of Cuvier, Pinel, and Freud respectively, and have used the
terms "myth" or "legend" to classify them as a genre, they did not concern
themselves with the question of why these "myths" were accepted and why they
"worked" (beyond the implicit conspiratorial view of rising schools' deliberately
abusing history in order to consolidate their claims to power). Outram alone
indicated that the constructed "myths" worked because they accommodated the
professional ideology of scientists-turned-historians.
For philosophical-historical discussions of the relationship between "myth"
and science see C. Moraz*, 'Les mythes, les sciences et l'invention sociale,"
Annales, Economies, Socie'ts, Civilisations, 30 (1975), 953-974; Y. Elkana,
"The Myth of Simplicity," Proceedings of the Einstein Centennial Symposium
(Jerusalem: Israeli Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1979).
The use of the concept of myth in this paper diverges from its previous uses as
a mode of thought contrasting science along the irrational/rational or primitive/
modern dichotomy - for example in R. Horton and R. Finnegan, eds.,Modes of
Thought (London: Faber and Faber, 1973). Rather, I build here on the concept
283
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
examining the evidence contained in this specific volume on Monod -

which, incidentally, is much more frank about its hero than such
volumes usually are. I shall discuss in particular four myths, arguing
that they create and control a differential distribution of knowledge
on the real operation of science as a sociopolitical system. In doing so,
they sustain both the social order within science and the position of
science in society at large.
Thus, I shall analyze the construction by the contributors of the
scientist-hero, stripped down to his scientific garb while his many other
of myth as a cultural resource structuring perceptions of reality so that a par-

ticular kind of social order is perpetuated. This concept was developed by C.
Levi-Strauss; see especially his Pens&e sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962) and the response
to his ideas by various students of myth in E. N. Hayes and T. Hayes, eds., Claude
Levi-Strauss: The Anthropologist as Hero (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1979).
Another developer was Roland Barthes; see especially his Mythologies (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1980; original French ed. publ. 1957).
In adapting this concept of myth to scientists' accounts of science, I suggest
that "myths" are a crucial device in constructing and crystallizing an ideal percep-
tion of science from the raw material of its cognitive and sociopolitical reality.
That ideal perception, projected as real and authentic, deflects the critical atten-
tion of scientists from prevailing distributions of power, at the same time creating
the gratifying illusion of sharing in a glorious enterprise. The net outcome of
producing, validating, and circulating "myths" is the preservation of a particular
social order in science as well as the preservation of a particular relationship
between science's practitioners and society at large. This is accomplished by
creating a differential distribution of knowledge on the inner workings of science
as a social system, especially among new recruits whose conformity to the system
is secured precisely by preventing them from "knowing what is going on." By the
time some of those recruits, upon whom the reproduction of science as a social
system so obviously depends, discover the discrepancy between reality and its
mythical representation, it is usually too late to escape. By then their investments,
spiritual and material, make the prospect of "liberation" highly unlikely, though
sometimes this disenchantment finds expression in public criticism of science.
One of the recent, interesting examples is Erwin's Chargaff's Heraclitean Fire:
Sketches of a Life before Nature (New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1978);
this is a magnifient lamentation of a former true believer who lost his blind faith
in science as a noble vocation and became a malcontent critic; see my analysis of
Chargaff's unique autobiography in "From Biochemistry to Molecular Biology:
DNA the Acculturated Journey of the Critic of Science Erwin Chargaff," Hist.
Phil. Life Sci, 2 (1980), 3-60.
1 use "myth" (rather than simply myth) in order to stress that this concept
is only partially analogous to myth as deployed in anthropology and that the
theoretical dimensions of its deployment as a fruitful concept in an anthropo-
logical account of science as a social system remains to be fully explored.
It must be emphasized that various approaches to the social construction of
284
nonscientific interests (artistic, social, political) are carefully relegated

to the background. This attempt to project an image of the hero wholly
absorbed by the vocation of science is not only a "mere" description,
but serves at the same time as an implicit and authoritative prescription
for scientist-readers to accept and conforrn to the supposed artistic,
social, or political neutrality of science.
I continue by exploring the myth of egalitarianism in science by
highlighting the relationship of the scientist-hero with students and
women scientists. These two populations are among the most powerless
"peers" in the supposedly egalitarian system of science. The students'
lesser knowledge and dual intellectual-emotional dependence on the
scientist-hero are all too often converted into lesser power and the
so-called privilege of admiring and consolidating the hero's ventures.
Similarly, the women scientists' lack of a socially and culturally vali-
dated role in a system that has been historically molded on the cultural
specificities and social values of men is often converted into a "privilege"
scientific knowledge are among the most relevant sources for a future understand-
ing of the role of "myth" in science and in the history of science. Latour and
Woolgar, in Laboratory Life, point to a possible fruitful direction, although there
is no historical dimension in their work. Of dual sociological-historical relevance
are two recent volumes: B. Barnes and S. Shapin, eds., Natural Order: Historical
Studies of Scientific Cultures (London: Sage Publications, 1979), and R. Wallis,
ed., On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge,
Sociological Review Monograph no. 27 (1979). Both demonstrate the interplay
of social and cognitive factors in the process of constructing knowledge as "scien-
tific" and as a "mere" record of an outside reality. See also the pioneering Ludwig
Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979; original German ed. publ. 1935). For philosophical-historical
discussions of the perspective of "social construction of scientific knowledge" see
also E. Mendelsohn, "The Political Anatomy of Controversy in the Sciences."
(Hastings Institute Studies, in press); "The Social Construction of Scientific
Knowledge," in E. Mendelsoh, P. Weingart, and R. Whitley, eds., 7he Social
Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences, (Boston: D.
Reidel PubI. Co., 1977), 1, 3-26; Y. Elkana, "Introduction: Culture, Cultural
System and Science," in R. S. Cohen et al., eds., Essays in Memory of Imre
Lakatos (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publ. Co., 1976), 99-107; idem, "The
Distinctiveness and Universality of Science: Reflections on the Work of Professor
Robin Horton," Minerva, 15 (1977), 155-173. See also the work of theoretical
anthropologists such as E. Gellner, especially his "Concepts and Society," in B. R.
Wilson, ed., Rationality (London: Penguin Books, 1970), pp. 1849; M. Douglas,
Natural Symbols (London: Penguin Books, 1970); C. Geertz, "Ideology as a
Cultural System," in his Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books,
1973); idem, Negara: The Theatre State in 19th Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1980).
285
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
to be tolerated. Women scientists frequently are denied a fair oppor-

tunity to convert their knowledge into positions of power within
science in the way that men customarily do.8
Next, I investigate the myth of the scientist-hero's making his
discoveries as a result of personal genius, while trivializing the critical
role of social institutions in properly constraining but also channeling
the creative energy of the scientist-hero in specific directions. I counter-
act this myth by pointing out the many facets of the Pasteur Institute
as a social setting, without which the emergence of Monod as a syn-
thesizer of bacterial physiology, genetics, and biochemistry cannot be
comprehended.
I look also at the myth of science as being independent from a social
and political context by highlighting the intimate links between the
science policy adopted by the French govemment, and others, in the
post-World War II period and the rise of disciplines like molecular
biology and heroes like Monod. And I close by examining the historio-
graphic import of Monod's memorial volume as a recent addition to a
thriving genre of scientists' own accounts of the history of molecular
biology in a deliberate attempt to deploy historical claims in present
struggles over the proper definition of this prestigious discipline.
UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE THE SCIENTIST FROM

THE HUMAN BEING
The thirty-two contributors to Monod's memorial volume started

their enterprise from an excellent vantage point. They possessed what
constitutes a necessary (though, as it turns out, not sufficient) condition
for fine writing, namely a very good subject. Jacques Lucien Monod
(1910-1976), who by the time of his death was the best-known scientist
in France and a world leader of the prestigious science of molecular
biology, had an unusually rich personality, life, and career. His many
accomplishments in a variety of domains (art, philosophy, sport,
administration, political and social activism), combined with his flair
for public and media appearances, transformed him into a cultural
8. On the conversion of knowledge or symbolic capital into power in science

see P. Bourdieu, "The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions
for the Progress of Reason," Soc. Sci Info., 14 (1974), 1947. On the knowledge
and power of women scientists see M. W. Rossiter, "Fair Enough?" Isis, 72
(1981), 99-103; Women, Science and Society (special issue), Signs, 4, no. 1
(1978); and my review of Goodfield,An Imagined World, in Isis (forthcoming).
286
hero even as he emerged as a scientist-hero. It is therefore all the more

surprising that the scientific community only postmortem established
him as an official hero through this rite of a historical tribute.
Indeed, Monod's death utterance, "Je cherche A comprendre," seems
to have better befitted the rites for scientific heroes than his controver-
sial conduct while alive. Monod achieving fame as writer, philosopher,
and administrator was seen as breaking a scientist's taboo, by publicly
demonstrating science's affinity for other social spheres of action and
especially science's ideological appeal. A major question arises: Who
was Monod, and why did his philosophy and public posture so agitate
some of his fellow scientists?
An outstanding contributor to the rising science of molecular
biology (structural and regulatory genes, repressor, operator, operon,
promoter, messenger-RNA, allostery - all are terms coined by Monod,
who had a special flair for new terminology), Monod rose to scientific
eminence in the 1950s with a series of discoveries on the cellular
control of enzymatic expression. In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
his research program culminated in a new framework of molecular
communication and control between proteins, RNA, and DNA. The
concepts and theories developed by Monod and his many collaborators
replaced many tenets of classical biochemistry and classical genetics
and were decisive in the consolidation of molecular biology as a novel,
distinct, and integrative science.9
The Nobel Prize in 1965, a chair at the College de France in 1967,
literary fame resulting from the public appeal of his philosophically
minded and polemical attempt to derive ethical principles from the
conceptual progress of molecular biology, Chance and Necessity in
1970, and the directorship of the venerated Pasteur Institute in 1971 -
these were the most visible landmarks in Monod's rise from a potential
to an actual cultural hero. Indeed, as we learn from the contributors to
his memorial volume, Monod conducted himself as a hero (a "Renais-
sance Prince," or a "Superman, straight out of Hollywood Central
9. J. Monod, "De l'adaptation enzymatique aux transitions allosteriques,"

Les Prix Nobel en 1965 (Stockholm: Norstedt & Soner, 1966), also published as
"From Enzymatic Adaptation to Allosteric Transitions," Science, 154 (1966),
475483; B. Fantini, "Jacques Monod, 1910-1976,' Scientia, 110 (1976), 907-
912; A. Lwoff, "Jacques Lucien Monod, 1910-1976," Biog. Mem. F.R.S., 23
(1977), 384-412; A. Lwoff and A. Ullmann, eds., Selected Papers in Molecular
Biology, by Jacques Monod (New York: Acadeniic Press, 1978). See also the
review of this last volume by M. R. Pollock in Nature, 278 (1979), 788-789.
287
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
Casting: handsome, tough, courageous, artistic, brilliant ... that

fabulous combination of Darwin and Prince Charming," as one of the
more metaphoric authors, Gunther Stent, put it) long before his late-
blooming but very successful career provided public acclaim.
From his early days as a fighter and commander of the French
Resistance in Nazi - occupied France to his later involvement in a
variety of political affairs on the stormy agenda of post-World War II
France,'0 Monod had never been an ivory-tower scientist, but rather
always remained the engage intellectual in the best French tradition
of a politically involved cultural elite. Besides science and politics,
Monod had a profound interest and ability in art (especially music and
writing), in sport (rock climbing and sailing), in public administration
(as director of the Pasteur Institute he was responsible for administra-
tive and fmancial reforms), and in public appearances on radio and
television.
Hence it is all the more surprising that the distinguished contributors
to the memorial volume, all (with the exception of Monod's technician
and secretary) renowned scientists, including four Nobel Prize winners,
thought it both possible and desirable to attempt to draw a portrait of
Monod the scientist in isolation from his other many pursuits. These
were evidently presumed irrelevant to his accomplishments in science.
Such an approach betrays the attempt to accommodate a complex and
multidimensional subject within the confines of a scientific ethos to
which the authors subscribe and that they wish to convey to outsiders.
Their hero's own defiance of this ethos makes their task even more
difficult.
The memorial volume must be evaluated in terms of its objective of
portraying a man and his time, or in the words of one contributor, "to
depict by means of successive patches (as an impressionistic painting)
a man through the epoch he lived in, and this epoch through the man"
(p. 117). To be sure, the numerous references to "La Belle Epoque"
of the early 1950s testify indirectly to the perception of the harder
times to come. Yet the focus remains on the nostalgic aspects of what
science might have been in its last days as a small-scale enterprise, with
10. Examples of his involvement include the Lysenko affair; "Choisir,"

a movement that fought for the legalization of abortion; and various activities
in helping people to escape totalitarian regimes all over the world. See also the
contributions of Agnes Ullmann, whom Monod smuggled out of Communist
Hungary, and of Monod's secretary, Madelaine Brunerie, in the memorial volume.
288
no discussion at all of what it became a generation later by the time the

volume was conceived in the late 1970s.11
The first patch in this collective attempt to provide an impressionistic
portrait of Monod is a reprinted obituary that was originally commis-
sioned by the Royal Society from Monod's long-time colleague, one-
time mentor, and cowinner of the Nobel Prize in 1965, Andre Lwoff.12
In this official portrait, first published in 1977, Lwoff provides a survey
of Monod's scientific contributions and career: from his days in the
1930s as a malcontent and marginal zoologist at the Sorbonne; to a
stint as a more innovative bacterial physiologist in the 1940s at the
Pasteur Institute; to his development as a synthesizer of microbiology,
biochemistry, and genetics in the 1950s; to his evolution into a theo-
retician and leader of molecular biology in the 1960s; and fimally to his
pinnacle of power as the controversial director of the Pasteur Institute
in the 1970s.
Besides being a source of overly compressed information on Monod's
unusual personal background,13 Lwoff's contribution is uniquely
important because it covers the early and more obscure phases of
Monod's career in the 1930s and early 1940s. Using Monod's own
statements, Lwoff suggests that four scientists had special influence
on the young Monod: Georges Teissier, a zoologist who pioneered
experimental population genetics and was Monod's mentor in the
1930s, credited with leaving him a legacy for quantitative thinking;
Lwoff, a comparative physiologist and microbiologist at the Pasteur
Institute and Monod's mentor in the 1940s, whose legacy to Monod
was a lasting interest in the field of microbiology; Boris Ephrussi, a
11. On the profound changes in science in the 1960s see J. Ravetz, Scientific
Knowledge and Its Social Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); for
a critique of life science in the 1960s and 1970s see Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire.
12. Lwoff, "Jacques Lucien Monod"; it is unfortunate that Monod's bibliog-
raphy was omitted (from Lwoff's original memoir) in this volume.
13. Monod's paternal family was French-Huguenot and returned to France
from Geneva after the French Revolution when their civil rights were restored;
his maternal family was Scottish-American. Monod was fully bilingual in English
and French. He was Parisian by birth and academic education but Proven9al by
schooling and temperament. His ancestors were mainly doctors, pastors, and
lawyers, yet his father was a painter, a free thinker, and a positivist. A great
deal of personal information on Monod, which is omitted in Lwoff's "official"
memoir may be found in H. F. Judson, 77ze Eight Days of Creation: The Makers
of the Revolution in BIology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979), chap. 7
and 10.
289
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
geneticist who made seminal contributions to physiological genetics in

the 1930s while at the Institut de Biologie Physico-chimique, sponsor
of Monod during a one-year research tour in T. H. Morgan's department
at Caltech in 1936 and credited with endowing Monod with an interest
in physiological genetics; and finally, Louis Rapkine, a biochemist at
the Institut de Biologie Physico-chimique and influential friend, credited
with impressing young Monod with the central importance of molecular
and chemical explanations of life phenomena.14
Lwoff refrains from evaluating the relative importance of these
various legacies, all attributed to scientists outside the official academic
establishment, during Monod's long gestation period when he was
formulating his own synthetic approach or during his subsequent emer-
gence as a leader of molecular biology. Nevertheless, Lwoff provides
important information regarding Monod's early exposure to a crucial
combination of scientific trends, which in the 1930s existed separate
and isolated in various research institutes while remaining peripheral
to the academic tradition. Yet the question of what kept Monod 'in
waiting" for more than a decade, deliberately on the periphery of
an academic science he refused to conform to (he never became a
"classical" biologist), is a question that even Lwoff fails to address.
Of special interest is Lwoff's suggestion that Monod, the molecular
biologist, suppressed his origins in classical biology. Monod studied with
14. For an example of Teissier's (1900-) approach in the 1930s, when he

influenced young Monod, see G. Teissier, "La description mathematique des faits
biologiques," Revue de me'taphysique et de morale (1936), 55-87; on Teissier's
career see C. Limoges, "A Second Glance at Evolutionary Biology in France,"
in E. Mayr and W. B. Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on
the Unification of Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980),
322-328. On Lwoff see Monod and Borek, Of Microbes and Life. On Ephrussi
(1901-) and Rapkine (1904-1948) see the fellowship files at the Rockefeller
Archive Center (Hillcrest, Pocantico Hills, North Tarrytown, N.Y. 10591). See
also the obituary of Louis Rapkine by R. Wurmser in Bulletin de societe de
chimie biologique, 30 (1948), 716-720; and Judson, The Eight Days of Creation,
chap. 7, which includes an interview with Ephrussi and mentions that Teissier was
Monod's brother-in-law; this information is omitted from Monod's memorial
volume, as is Monod's fascination with the paradox of living beings as violating
the laws of nature (that is, of physics), a major concern in the 1930s. See for
example A. C. Leeman, "La physico-chimie peut-elle integralement expliquer des
phenomenes biologique?" Scientia (1937), 31-37, 93-100. Monod's fascination
with the paradox of living being is mentioned in Monod's "autobiography,"
Contemporary Scientists and Technologists (Milan: Mondadori, 1975), II, 258-
262.
290
the eminent classical biologists Maurice Caullery, zoologist and cytol-

ogist at the Laboratoire d'Evolution des Ntres Organisees in Paris,
and Edouard Chatton, protistologist at the University of Strasbourg.
Although Lwoff refrains from commenting on Monod's selective and
oblique choice of scientiflc ancestors, one is tempted to suggest that
the playing down of his origins in classical biology at a time when he
was busily involved in establishing molecular biology as a major break
with the past, is another illustration of the "Kuhn phenomenon."
Revolutions, molecular or otherwise, by necessity and not by chance
(to play on Mond's favorite metaphor of molecular evolution), have a
distorting impact on historiography.
Lwoff attributes Monod's mnany scientific accomplishments to a
combination of personal characteristics (for example, his capacity to
concentrate on one fundamental problem depsite the lure of many
peripheral discoveries); his sharp logic and experimental ingenuity; and
his equally important talent for coordinating the efforts of many scien-
tists in his research group, as well as his ability to synthesize findings
from many domains. He stresses the importance of Monod's capacity to
attract outstanding collaborators who were able to complement his own
approach. He singles out Melvin Cohn in the early 1950s and Franqois
Jacob in the late 1950s from many overshadowed collaborators whose
precise role in promoting Monod's research program also remains to be
assessed.
Cohn and Jacob themselves provide profoundly different stories
about Monod. Frangois Jacob was the third cowinner of the Nobel
Prize with Lwoff and Monod in 1965 and author of La logique du
vivant, a conceptual history of genetics and its input into molecular
biology.15 His contribution focuses on describing his and Monod's
now famous "grand collaboration" in the period 1957 to 1962, a
collaboration that culminated in the first theory of cellular regulation
and had a crucial impact on the consolidation of molecular biology.
Jacob provides a fascinating account of the convergence of his own
research on lysogeny with Monod's research on enzymatic "induction"
into the beautiful synthesis of the first model of cellular regulation.
Besides conveying the conceptual and methodological facets of the
grand collaboration, Jacob discusses the controversial personality of
15. F. Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1973; original French ed. publ. 1970). See also the illuminating essay
review of this book by F. L. Holmes, Studies in the History of Biology, 1 (1977),
209-218.
291
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
Monod along the psychoanalytically naive dichotomy of a good guy

and a bad guy residing in one person. On the one hand, there was "a
very warm and generous man of great charm; a man interested in people
as well as in ideas, constantly available to his friends"; and on the other
hand there was the man who was "incredibly dogmatic, self-confident,
and domineering; a person unceasingly in quest of admiration and
publicity." Fortunately for Jacob, we learn that most of the time
during their collaboration the good guy was on display. Though Jacob,
like Lwoff, refrains from interpreting Monod's controversial conduct
(which in any case he limits to his observations of Monod the scientist),
he provides crucial insights into the interplay of personality and scien-
tific style that was so unique to Monod.
A different emphasis on Monod is given by his other major collab-
orator, Melvin Cohn, who also remained a lifelong close friend. Cohn
stresses Monod's fascination as an intellect and a versatile human being.
An American immunologist who graduated from Harvard in 1947 and
is now with the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, Cohn spent six
years (1948-1954) as Monod's collaborator while mastering the art of
collecting fellowships, as another author put it. He played a crucial
role, attested to by other contributors, in Monod's early successes in
demonstrating the de novo synthesis of enzymes. Describing and
graphically illustrating the lore and subculture of Lwoff's and Monod's
tiny labs at that time, which made them very agreeable places for
research, Cohn focused on Monod, the widely cultivated French intel-
lectual whose refined taste for elegance and cutting logic accounted for
his artistic and philosophic approaches to science.
Of special interest to the reader is Cohn's emphasis on Monod's
sense for the theater of the absurd (whose promulgator, Eugene lonesco,
was making his debut in Paris at that time), a cultural resource he
employed in his science when pursuing with great determination and
insight the least logical options of his research program first. Cohn also
stresses Monod's predilection for a Popperian philosophy of science,
but refrains from exploring the possibly local philosophical sources of
Monod's search for rational certainty in logical schemes and experi-
ments designed to refute rather than corroborate hypotheses. This
is rather unfortunate, since Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery
(Monod wrote the preface to the French edition in 1973) came into
vogue in the 1960s, a little late to influence Monod's "crucial experi-
ments" in the 1950s.'6 Furthermore, Cohn attributes Monod's success
16. Monod's foreword to Popper's famous book, which appeared in French
292
to the fact that his physiological theories were reducible to an exact

chemical approach. Yet his examples of the varied French cultural
resources that Monod deployed in creating his own scientific style
provide more important clues to a future understanding of Monod and
the "French" origins of molecular biology, than would his invoking
the ever-explanatory reductionist approach as the key to success in
biology. 7
Further insights into the delicate balance between the light and
shadow of Monod's complex personality are provided by Martin Pol-
lock, retired former chairman of the Department of Molecular Biology
at the University of Edinburgh and a frequent author of historiographic
essays on biology.'8 Pollock confirms the evidence on Monod's greatness
as Logique de la dkcouverte scientifique (Paris: Payot, 1973), dates from 1973

although the English version published in 1959 acquired fame in the 1960s. In
1974 Monod participated with Popper in a symposium on scientific creativity;
most of the participating scientists were Nobel Prize winners. See H. A. Krebs and
J. A. Shelley, eds., The Ceative Process in Science and Medicine (Amsterdam:
Elsevier, 1974). A. Danchin, another contributor to this volume, testifies to
Monod's interest in Popper during their acquaintance in the period 1973 to 1976.
It is plausible that Monod, like other scientific leaders, looked to Popper's phi-
losophy of science, especially when his own philosophical book, Chance and
Necessity, came under attack - among other things, because of its assumption of
objectivity in science. This later interest was "reconstructed" and superimposed
on an earlier period in Monod's life, as a scientific influence befitting the prescrip-
tive dimensions of Popper's philosophy of science.
Yet another contributor, Nobel Prize winner Salvador Luria, who visited
Monod's lab in the 1950s, mentioned that Monod was an existential philosopher.
lndeed, the dominant philosophy in France in the 1950s was Sartre's existen-
tialism. Another cultural key figure espousing this philosophy, Albert Camus,
was a personal friend of Monod. See J. D. Wilkinson, The Intellectual Resistance
in Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). Rather than
exploring the possible resonance of Monod's sense of the "absurd" in science
(mentioned by Cohn) and his close links with the existential-philosophic elite in
the historical context of the 1940s and 1950s, the contributor-scientists are
content to invoke a belated Popperian philosophy as the only possible philo-
sophical influence behind Monod's scientific style.
17. For a recent evaluation of the role of reductionism in the biological
sciences see K. F. Schaffner, "Reduction, Reductionism, Values, and Progress in
the Biomedical Sciences," in R. G. Colodny, ed., Logic, Laws and Life (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), pp. 141-1 71.
18. M. R. Pollock, "The Changing Concept of Organism in Microbiology,"
Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol., 19 (1969), 273-305; idem, "Back to Pangenesis," in
Monod and Borek, Of Microbes and Life, pp. 75-87; idem, "From Pangens to
Polynucleotides: The Evolution of Ideas on the Mechanism of Biological Replica-
tion," Perspect. Biol. Med., 19 (1976), 455-472.
293
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
as a scientist but also sustains with excellent stories his personal experi-
ence with Monod's insensitive conduct toward those he perceived as
less than brilliant. Pollock attests to the repressive impact of flashy
geniuses like Monod on more reserved scientists who were inhibited
from thinking or acting independently in his dominating presence and
who were often beguiled by his excessive confidence into misleading
tracks. Pollock's observations are independently corroborated by other
collaborators and students of Monod, who had a hard time pursuing
their own intuitions when those intuitions clashed with Monod's.
Pollock also illustrates the price of success, suggesting that Monod
became estranged from former, less successful, or as he put it "scien-
tifically irrelevant," colleagues.
Pollock's, Jacob's, and Lwoff's brief but incisive comments on
Monod's controversial personality are highlighted by his appointment
as director of the Pasteur Institute in 1971, for this position put him in
power over his former colleagues. Their perceptions are complemented
by the North American molecular biologist Roger Stanier, who first
visited the Pasteur Institute in the 1950s. Stanier, together with his
wife, the French-born former collaborator of Monod, Germaine Cohen-
Bazire, joined the institute in 1971, just in time to get a close-up view
of Monod's ascent and conduct as director.
Stanier makes an effort to account for Monod's apparently auto-
cratic conduct as director, a conduct that he and other contributors
deem unbefitting a scientist. Yet he fails to explain why Monod's overt
exercise of power, demanded structurally by his position, was so
resented by scientists who seemed to tolerate his formerly covert
exercises (described in abundance in the memorial volume) in constantly
dominating his scientific "equal." Possibly Stanier's American bias in
valuing well-disguised power is responsible for his profound efforts
to cope with Monod's preference in making legitimate power visible.
Indeed, Stanier offers the interesting suggestion that Monod's contro-
versial conduct was a product of many unresolved conflicts in his
personality, conflicts allegedly produced by Monod's strongly Calvinist
ethos in the context of a predominantly French Catholic culture.'9
19. Stanier's emphasis on Monod's Calvinist background as an important

source of his aspirations and behavior is well placed. Unfortunately, the social and
cultural context that produced Monod the scientist is almost entirely neglected by
all the contributors. Monod used to refer to himself as a "puritan in science." (See
his autobiographical essay in Contemporary Scientists and Technologists, p. 258).
Note that he also had a brother, Victor, who was a professor at the Faculty of
294
Stanier's important perception is not augmented, however, because

he limits his empirical evidence to one episode, refrains from exploring
Monod's actual religious practices and beliefs (as a member of a cultural
elite, a onetime Communist, born a Calvinist, married to a Jew in
a Catholic country, Monod became an atheist), and avoids dealing
with the possible connections between Monod's allegedly influential
religious background and his late antireligious polemic as evidenced in
Chance and Necessity. Neither does Stanier see connections between
Monod's ferocious antivitalism and molecular evolutionism and his
religious background. These philosophical positions of Monod might
have been in their turn related to his scientific contributions; for
example, Monod opted for a selective versus an instructive theory of
protein allostery.
Stanier feels that religion, whatever its impact and substance, can
influence one's psychological makeup but not one's science. Similarly,
Stanier's emphasis on Monod's background in the grand bourgeoisie
may also account for his gentile paternalism toward his scientific
associates. In its turn, Monod's paternalism might have been closely
related to the accumulation of authority and scientific credit on his
behalf. The latter problem still troubles Monod's collaborators, but
they all fall short of solving it, since they assume a priori that other
spheres of life such as social structure and religious or ethnic back-
ground are entirely irrelevant to one's accomplishments in science.
In Monod's case, it is very plausible that his status as a member of a
minority, perhaps in conjunction with the Calvinist ethos, could have
Protestant Theology in Strasbourg; see Victor Monod, La devalorisation de

l'homme (Strasbourg: Alcan, 1936). The social style of the French Protestant
grand bourgeoisie is also evident in Monod's gentile paternalism toward his
associates, as well as in some of his hobbies such as mountain climbing. "We find
again here this bourgeois promoting of the mountains, this old Alpine myth (since
it dates back to the nineteenth century) which Gide rightly associated with
Helvetico-Protestant morality and which has always functioned as a hybrid
compound of the cult of nature and of puritanism (regeneration through clean
air, moral ideas at the sight of mountaintops, summit-climbing as civic virtue,
etc.)" in Barthes, Mythologies, p. 74. Although several contributors mention
Monod's passion for mountain climbing, none seem to have been aware that it
might have been a component of his unique cultural background in the grand
bourgeoisie of Geneva. His paternal ancestors had lived in Geneva since late in
the seventeenth century, when the Huguenots were driven out of France. Early
in the nineteenth century, after their civil rights were restored, many Huguenots,
including Monod's great-grandfather, returned to France.
295
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
been a source of repressed political ambitions, for he obviously aspired

to leadership.20
Other accounts of discoveries by Monod's collaborators, interspersed
with personal recollections of an admiring nature, are provided by a
group of mostly veteran Pasteuriens who benefited from Monod's
intellectual stimulation and patronage. The particular importance of
these contributors (among whom Elie Wollman, a long-time colleague
and vice president of the Pasteur Institute, is notably mising)21 lies in
their insights into the Pasteur Institute as a research setting markedly
different from the rigid, hierarchical, and conservative university sys-
tem. The prevailing conflict and different subcultures of the Pasteuriens
and the Sorbonnards, together with these authors' recollections of
Monod's contempt for the latter, illuminate the contradictions of
the institutional ecology that produced Monod, as well as his later
attempts to reform both the Pasteur and the Sorbonne. Apparently
never a true Pasteurien, and always ambivalent in his sense of belonging
to social groups as the result of a really unique social background,
Monod was one of the very few scientists to combine these antag-
onistic establishments in his career - and apparently the only one to
attempt to reform both. Since 1962, when he accepted the biochemistry
chair at the Sorbonne (apparently unable to resist the prospect of
becoming the crowned emperior of French biochemistry),22 Monod
combined a university appointment with the directorship of the cellular
20. By tradition members of the French Protestant grand bourgeoisie gravi-

tated toward certain professions such as law, religion, medicine, and banking,
while avoiding direct involvement in politics. Such a tradition proved repressive
for someone who, like Monod, aspired to leadership. These aspirations, evidenced
by his passion for conducting, were amply illustrated by his behavior as a Resist-
ance fighter, a politically involved scientist, and a top science administrator.
As his influential friend Louis Rapkine remarked, Monod was interested in
conducting because it put him in control of people. This was one of the arguments
with which Rapkine apparently convinced a long-hesitating Monod to become a
scientist rather than a musician. Accepting science as a profession might also have
resonated with Monod's father's positivism. Monod's philosophy retained a
decisive positivist streak despite his many radical ideas. It is evident that Monod's
sociocultural background will prove decisive for a future understanding of Monod
the hero-scientist.
21. For Wollman's historical recollections see E. L. Wollman, "Bacterial
Conjugation," in Cairns, Stent, and Watson, Phage and Molecular Biology, pp.
216-225; also in ludson, The Eight Days of OCeation, chap. 7.
22. Correspondence of Monod with Melvin Cohn, mentioned in Judson, The
Eight Days of Creation.
296
biochemistry laboratory at the Pasteur Institute, which he had held

since 1953.
An even larger contingent of foreign scientists, mostly American -
including crucial collaborators and/or competitors Arthur Pardee of the
PaJaMa experiment,23 Jeffries Wyman of the Monod-Wyman-Changeux
allostery-symmetry theory,' Daniel Koshland of the alternative
Koshland-Nemethy-Filmer instructive model of protein structure and
function,25 and Nobel Prize winners Francis Crick and Salvador Luria -
provide additional glimpses of Monod the original scientist, fascinating
intellectual, master of style, cultivated esthete, expert sailor, adven-
turous human being, existential philosopher, human rights champion.
Yet it is slightly disappointing to find out that Crick, who with Monod
ranked as the top theoreticians of molecular biology, prefaces his
contribution with vague memories of discussion the two of them held
about Chance and Necessity and devotes most of his recollections to
Monod's accomplishments in sailing.
THE SCIENTIST-HERO AND HIS MOST DEPENDENT PEERS
Monod's role as teacher and research supervisor in the French tradi-

tion of the enlightened patron is recalled in interesting contributions
by his former students, all of whom discuss, though much too briefly,
the turning point in teacher-student relationships that occurred in
1968. It seems that Monod's style of patronage, despite its pleasantries
and concern for the welfare of his intellectual dependents, was rendered
obsolete when its perpetuation of an antiquarian mode of dominance
became transparent.
Feeling that he was no longer much needed in the new atmosphere
of "contestation," Monod sought and accepted the still powerful
23. A. B. Pardee, F. Jacob, and J. Monod, "The Genetic Control and Cyto-
plasmic Expression of 'Inducibility' in the Synthesis of Beta-Galactosidase by
Escherichia coli," J. Molecular Biol., 1, 165-167; see also K. Schaffner, "Logic
of Discovery and Justification in Regulatory Genetics," Stud. Hist. and Phil.
Sci., 4 (1974), 349-385, which provides a philosophical analysis of this classic
experiment.
24. J. Monod, J. Wyman, and J-P. Changeux, "On the Nature of Allosteric
Transitions: A Plausible Model," J. Molecular Biol., 12, 88-118; on J. Wyman see
also J. T. Edsall, "Jeffries Wyman for His 75th Birthday," J. Molecular Biol., 108
(1976), 269-270; Judson, The Eight Days of Creation, chap. 10.
25. See Antoine Danchin, "Conjectures and Refutations," in the memorial
volume, 243-246.
297
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
directorship of the Pasteur Institute. This meant in essence a gradual

abandonment of his scientific practice, something that unnecessarily
puzzles his scientific colleagues. Most of these scientists fail to notice
that for Monod, science - like anything else in his many areas of
expertise - involved mastering and dominating. They invoke his sense
of duty, ostensibly Puritan, in accounting for his decision to accept the
directorship of the institute, overlooking the possibility that Monod,
quite legitimately despite his current status as a scientist-hero, might
have had other goals in life beyond conforming to a scientific ethos and
being a "mere" scientist. One wonders what Monod's apologists would
think of Newton's becoming Master of the Mint.
Another interesting group of contributors is the women scientists,
who make their debut in Monod's memorial volume beyond the zero
representation level or tokenist threshold that characterize previous
anniversary volumes.' Annamaria Torriani, an Italian-born micro-
biologist, now at M.I.T., and wife of the late biochemist and human
rights activist Luigi Gorini," recalls her collaboration with Monod in
the late 1940s and early 1950s, when Monod's small group was an
integral part of Lwoff's bacterial physiology unit. She emphasizes
Monod's informality, courtesy, and philosophic musings, his self-
awareness of being different ("they [the Americans] are the expert,
I am a self-made man"), his way of impressing - almost seducing -
intellectually. However, she also contextualizes her work with Monod
(on the mechanism of enzyme induction in bacteria) in the social and
cultural ambience of the mixed contingent of French and foreign
scientists who came to work with Lwoff and Monod at the Pasteur
Institute. Thus, she emphasizes the "institution" of the intellectual
lunch at which all scientists gathered to discuss politics, art, music; as
well as the language and cultural barriers faced by the foreign scientists
(to whom Lwoff spoke only French and Monod spoke only English).
She stresses the input of experience, intelligence, knowledge, and
friendship brought by a constant contingent of temporary visitors,
mostly Americans.
Though Torriani attributes a great deal of the excitement of labora-
tory life to Monod's personality and scientific resourcefulness, she also
26. See the list of contributors in Cairns, Stent, and Watson, Phage and
Molecular Biology; Rich and Davidson, Structural Chemistry; and Monod and
Borek, Of Microbes and Life.
27. See J. Beckwith and D. Fraenkel, "Luigi Gorini, 1903-1976," Biog. Mem.
Nat. Acad. Sci. (U.S.), 52 (1981), 203-221.
298
recalls the more mundane fact, otherwise unnoticed by all but Monod's
technician, that the smooth operation of the lab depended not only on
the stream of great ideas and crucial experiments that flew through
Monod's fertile mind (often into the performing hands of his various
collaborators), but also on the availability of stable and skilled technical
personnel, some of them provincial women who also endowed the lab
with the emotional comfort of a family atmosphere.
Germaine Stanier, who collaborated with Monod in the early 1950s
when his group was very small, joined the Pasteur Institute with her
husband Roger in 1971, after almost twenty years at the University of
California in Berkeley. At that time Monod having become director,
was available only for incidental nonscientifilc small talk. It is under-
standable that she recalls with nostalgia the gai savoir that had per-
meated Monod's lab twenty years earlier. She stresses Monod's interest
in mathematically beautiful biological laws and provides one of the best
aphorisms for which Monod was renowned, recalling his answer to an
editor concemed about an overly theoretical paper: "If you publish
this as it stands, I promise that my next paper will contain only facts."
Of equal interest is Stanier's stress on Monod's engaging in scientific
education through monthly club reunions, which proved especially
beneficial for younger scientists, and his concern with cultivating the
literary taste of his collaborators.
Agnes Ullmann, ingeniously smuggled out of Communist Hungary
by Monod, recalls his efforts to secure freedom for her and her husband.
However, she also recalls their lack of success in isolating the repressor
molecule predicted by Monod. She retrospectively admits that, to some
extent, this resulted from the fact that she did not dare to defy his
confidence that the repressor was RNA (it turned out to be a protein).28
Indirectly, she suggests that Monod's position as director of Pasteur
estranged him not only from science but also from scientists, a lone-
liness alleviated by Monod's faithful new Airedale, Vicky, a dog who
like her master was exceptional: she was the only dog allowed to visit
the Pasteur laboratories.
These three accomplished women scientists provide a much more
sensitive picture of the human interaction among the various figures in
Monod's lab than many of the men scientists, who habitually noticed
results rather than people. Nevertheless, the women could have elab-
orated further on their possibly specific experience as women in the
28. See Judson, The Eight Days of aeation, chap. 10, for the story of the
repressor.
299
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
"family-oriented" lab of Lwoff and Monod,29 or on how their experi-

ence as women scientists in France compared with other countries
where they had worked (such as Italy, Hungary, or the United States).
We learn that Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex (1949) was discussed
over the intellectual lunches of Monod and Lwoff's groups, as befitted
an item central to the cultural agenda in France at that time; none of
Monod's opinions are recalled, however.30
A former student of Monod who was sensitized ideologically by the
1968 events, Marie-Helene Buc, is more specific on Monod's attitude
to women in science. She asked in 1962 to become a graduate student
in his laboratory shortly after having had a baby. Even though Monod's
lab could boast more women than most other labs at that time, as
partially evidenced by the seven women contributors to his memorial
volume, Buc recalls his opinion being against women having a scientific
career. As always, his logic was compelling: women, because of the
"necessary investments" outside science, namely family obligations,
might not possess free minds, something he saw as essential to doing
worthwhile research. Monod was frank enough to discuss the issue
openly. Once convinced of Buc's determination to solve her family
problems in her own way, he accepted her into the lab, where she
enjoyed the same pleasant patemalism as her male colleagues (including
husband Henri Buc). Perhaps it was not a matter of chance that Buc,
more than any other student of Monod, having faced his paternalism
in a double dose - both as a student or intellectual dependent and as a
29. Besides the assistant technical staff, composed mostly of older women
who acted as "grandaunts," the wife of the chef-de-service, Marguerite Lwoff,
assisted her husband and provided a maternal atmosphere for those coming to
work with her "patron"-husband.
30. France is known for its scientific couples -- for example, Pierre and
Marie Curie, and Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie at the Radium Institute; Rene
and Sabine Wurmser, and Louis and Sarah Rapkine at the lnstitut de Biologie
Physico-chimnique; Eugen and Elisabeth Wonlman, and Andre and Marguerite
Lwoff at the Pasteur Institute. Exactly what kind of role model these women
scientists working under the legitimizing aura of their scientist-husbands could fill
must still be assessed; it also remains an open question whether women scientists
fared better in France than in England or the United States before the era of
affirmative action. Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (New York: Norton,
1975), suggests that they did. Apparently the couple-oriented French culture and
its lack of a strong tradition of male exclusive social clubs tolerated women in
science to a greater extent than its Anglo-Saxon counterparts. It should also be
recalled that Monod's wife, Odette Bruhl, was a woman with an independent
career as curator of the Musee Guimet.
300
woman - provides us with the compelling evidence: "I know better

than you what is good for you." This was an angry Monod's statement
after Buc disagreed with him in public and epitomized the kind of
relationship that would not become unacceptable until after the revolt
of 1968. Incidentally, Monod's public image with regard to the 1968
events is profoundly antiestablishment; we find him crossing barricades
to be on the students' side, escorting wounded students away from the
police, and pleading with the Sorbonne faculty for a mild reaction to
the rebels.3' Apparently it was in science only that he insisted on being
"in charge."
Indeed, students Maxime Schwartz and David Perrin talk about
Monod the "maltre" and "ses el'ves," emphasizing the respect and
affection conveyed by the French word "maltre." In view of the ample
testimony that Monod was a real boon as a mentor, always ready,
willing, and able to solve the intellectual and personal problems of his
associates and students, whom he would address as "mes enfants"; and
the fact that they all subscribed to the ethos of a scientific laboratory
as the embodiment of collegial and egalitarian relationships; one can
easily see why so many contributors never noticed that Monod managed
his lab as if it were a grand bourgeois household.32
The supreme need for emotional comfort, in an intellectually
demanding and competitive enterprise like science, may also explain
why many scientists felt it was more pleasant to have a caring French
maitre rather than an impersonal American boss. The combination of
respect and affection for the master has always been an excellent recipe
for social stability or perpetuation of the prevailing forms of dominance.
Indeed, forms of dominance, while possibly flexible and "allosteric,"
nevertheless remain under the control of cultural expression. One can
only hope that the social sciences will fmd their own Monod to discover
the third secret of life - the mode of cultural control of social order, in
which disguised dominance is only one mechanism.
31. See various contributions in the memorial volume; also Judson, The Eight
Days of Creation, chaps. 7 and 10.
32. For the social psychology of researchers in molecular biology see A.
Marcovich, "Essai sur la creativite du chercheurs dans la biologie moleculaire"
(Doctoral diss. Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1976); also Latour and
Woolgar, Laboratory Life. See also Monod's reference to his student Changeux
as possibly committing "patricide" (p. 208). The dynamics of social psychology
of scientists, together with the cultural hegemony of grand bourgeois manners,
seems to account for the family atmosphere and happiness prevailing in Monod's
laboratory.
301
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
THE SPECIAL QUALITY OF THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE
So far I have examined the bearing of Monod's memorial volume on

the public representation of two scientifilc "myths." The first pertained
to the fashioning of Monod, the versatile human being, into a "mere"
scientist. While several contributors alluded to Monod's many other
endeavors, the very fact that they were mentioned only in passing led
to a disproportionate emphasis on science. The converging message
amounts to a distorted picture of reality in which the centrality of
science for the hero is assumed rather than substantiated. The resulting
"4myth" is convincing because it is based on authenticity, yet not all
that is authentic is included in constructing the "myth." This kind of
"myth" functions primarily for recruiting purposes, by conveying the
idea that even great and heroic figures find science their main medium
of expression.
The second "myth" pertained to the invisibility of the unequal
power relationships between figures of authority in science, such as our
hero, and science's vulnerable populations of students and women. This
"myth" functions as an important device for sustaining a particular
kind of social order - paternalism - in science. It further obscures the
contradictions between the reality of everyday life in science and its
ethos as an egalitarian enterprise, concerned with knowledge and not
with power. Indeed, the understanding that discourses (scientific
included) articulate both knowledge and power is rather new.33 Equally
new is the realization that women in science experience a different
career pattern than men, and that this difference derives from women's
disadvantage in access to power, not from their lesser knowledge.34
Even though Monod's lab accepted more women scientists than most
others, they owed their position primarily to the hero's cultural value
of grand bourgeois gentile paternalism. While gentile paternalism has
obvious emotional and intellectual advantages and is certainly more
appealing than nongentile paternalism or even businesslike patronage,
33. For the conceptualization of discourse as articulating both knowledge

and power see M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction
(New York: Vintage, 1980; original French ed. publ. 1976); see also P. Bourdieu,
"La representation politique: elements pour une theorie du champ politique,"
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 36 (1981), 3-22; J-M. Levy-Leblond
and A. Jaubert, (Auto)critique de la science (Paris: Seull, 1975); Bourdieu,
"Specificity of the Scientific Field."
34. See Rossiter, "Fair Enough?" and Levy-Leblond and Jaubert, (Auto)cri-
tique de la science, chap. 8.
302
the relationship between the social order in the hero's lab and the
accretion of disproportionate scientific credit on his behalf remains
equivocal and is not clarified by the contributors to the memorial
volume.35
Now I turn to examine two additional "myths" pertaining to the
construction of science as being neutral with regard to its institutional
and political contexts. In this section, I shall look at the trivialization
of the institutional setting that produced the scientist-hero, through
harmless anecdotes about the Pasteur Institute. Several contributors
are troubled by the distribution of credit in molecular biology and
emphasize their own role in Monod's many joint discoveries. Never-
theless, in coming to explain Monod's position as world leader of
molecular biology, they all find his numerous personal talents to be the
only possible explanation for his steady accumulation of prestige and
authority.
In the end, Monod is credited with possessing a French Cartesian
logic; analogical reasoning within the physical sciences (Monod is
presumed to have analogized a bacterial population to an ideal gas);
experimental ingenuity (though it turns out his experiments were
mostly performed by others); a knack for generalization (where other
less theoretically minded scientists saw the results of an experiment
as particular, Monod always sought the universal); a capacity for
synthesizing findings, both his own and those of close or remote
associates from different fields (while other scientists preferred to
stay loyal to one discipline); a taste for elegant and stylish papers
(whfle other scientists were content to report, as one author put it, the
contents of their notebooks); and more elusive gifts such as imagination,
intuition, and common sense.
Although true talent is as important in making scientific discoveries
as in making significant contributions in other fields, this impressive
battery of personal talents is not completely satisfying as an explana-
tion for Monod's creativity and impact. The comforting assertion that
"the right problem was posed at the right time in the right environ-
ment," as Lwoff insists (on p. 22 of the memorial volume), simplifies
the issue.
The profound legacy of the Pasteur Institute for Monod, and by
implication for molecular biology, is only indirectly suggested by the
35. For the mechanisms of converting symbolic capital into positions of

power in science see Bourdieu, "Specificity of the Scientific Field."
303
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
the contributors.36 All of the authors, both French and foreign, who
spent time at the Pasteur Institute emphasize that it provided an
extremely pleasant setting and was conducive to producing good work.
Their clues, however, indicate that the legacy of the institute resulted
from many facets of its operation.
First, the Pasteur was one of the best repositories in the world for
microbiological expertise. This expertise ranged from an excellent
collection of strains, to stable and highly skilled technical personnel,
to a research tradition that attracted talented researchers. It was this
tradition, which proud and loyal Pasteuriens called "esprit" (para-
phrasing Emile Duclaux's Pasteur: Une histoire d'un esprit, 1904), that
seemed to elevate them to a position of advantage on the otherwise
competitive scientific market.37 As one Pasteurien put it, this advantage
saved them from having to engage in the "rat race" and partly explains
the pleasant and inspiring atmosphere that so struck visiting scientists
from North America.
Second, the Pasteur Institute was fimancially independent, having
started as a public endowment following Pasteur's success in curing
rabies.38 This independence enabled it to escape the bureaucratizing,
centralizing, and conservative effects of government administration.
The negative impact of the heavily bureaucratized system on innovation
in the French universities, especially in new fields, is well known.39
One can understand why,after Monod's obscure decade at the Sorbonne
36. See especially the comments of the following contributors: Franqois Gros,
Gerard Buttin, David Perrin, Martin Pollock, Melvin Cohn, Annamaria Torriani,
and Germaine Cohen-Bazire; none, however, indicated whether the pleasant
atmosphere they encountered in Lwoff's and Monod's laboratories characterized
the Pasteur Institute as a whole, or whether it derived from the personalities of
the two men.
37. Wollman to Judson, in Judson, The Eight Days of Creation, chap. 7, p.
350; also David Perrin in the memorial volume, pp. 133-136.
38. E. Duclaux, Pasteur: Une Histoire d'un Esprit (Paris: 1904); A. Lwoff in
the memorial volume, 17-19; Judson, The Eight Days of Creation, chap. 7; A.
Delaunay, L'Institut Pasteur des Origines a Aujourd'hui (Paris: Editions France
Empire, 1973).
39. See J. Ben-David, "The Rise and Decline of France as a Scientific Center,"
Minerva, 8 (1970), 160-179; T. N. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French
University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences (Cambridge/Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1973); C. Limoges, "Cuvierism, the French Academic System
and the Delayed Reception of Darwinism in France," paper presented at M.l.T.'s
colloquium on "Science, Technology and Society," March 1979; Limoges, "A
Second Glance."
304
culminating in his dissertation, the examiners concluded in 1941 that

"what Monod is doing does not interest the Sorbonne" (p. 5 of the
memorial volume). Monod was capable of expressing his unique genius
only upon finding a proper research context at the Pasteur Institute.
With Lwoff's encouragement Monod explored the implications of his
dissertation, which already included the basic problems and observa-
tions that were to become the basis of his unique contribution to
molecular biology. The esprit of the Pasteuriens, as an alternative
subculture to the supreme academic prestige of the Sorbonnards, was
extremely important in luring and sustaining the loyalty of a self-
conscious and nonconformist genius like Monod.
A third aspect of the Pasteur Institute's uniqueness was an internal
organization that enabled, even encouraged, research from a variety of
disciplinary perspectives. Unlike the university, which structured its
rigid order around scientific disciplines (bodies of knowledge which
also constituted claims to institutional power),40 research institutes in
general favored transdisciplinary collaboration and syntheses.41 Thus,
at the Pasteur Institute, as long as the research revolved around bacterial
phenomenology, it could legitimately encompass a variety of disci-
plinary resources, such as biochemistry, genetics, cellular physiology,
immunology, virology.
This legacy is most evident in the circumstances of the "grand
collaboration" between Jacob, Monod, and their associates (nicely
illustrated in the memorial-volume selections by Jacob, Pardee, Perrin,
and Gros), when they used a variety of disciplinary resources to devise
the first theoretical explanation of cellular regulation. It was not a
matter of chance that this model, of unique importance in the launching
of molecular biology, was conceived and worked out at the Pasteur
Institute. For it was not only Monod's perseverance in sticking to
one problem that ensured his success; of equal importance was an
40. There is no literature specifically on this interpretation, but see Bourdieu,

"Specificity of the Scientific Field," for some indicative approaches; also the
course "Dynamique des disciplines scientifiques," given by C. Limoges and L.
Pyenson at the Universite de Montreal for doctoral students: also P. Abir-Am,
"Restructuring the Knowledge-Power Relations between Physics and Biology
in the 1930s: The Roles of the Theoretical Biology Club and the Rockefeller
Foundation," paper delivered at the lnternational Conference on the Recasting
of Science between the Two World Wars, Florence-Rome, June 23-July 3, 1980,
to appear in the Proceedings of that conference.
41. See for example R. Dubos, The Professor, the Institute and DNA (New
York: Rockefeller University Press, 1976).
305
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
institutional context that both endowed and constrained him to prob-

lems of bacterial phenomenology, while legitimizing the transcending of
traditional disciplinary approaches. This transcendence was necessary
in order to achieve the multimethodological and multidisciplinary
synthesis embodied in molecular biology.
In accounting for the particular height of Monod's ambitions, goals,
and achievements, one cannot overlook the ever-present inspiration of
the original director of the Pasteur Institute, Louis Pasteur. No doubt,
Pasteur's career as an eminent scientist, cultural hero, and shrewd
politician in both science and in society at large42 was a powerful role
model for Monod. One need not draw here the many parallels between
the careers of Pasteur and Monod - or recall Monod and Cohn devel-
oping their friendship in endless discussions over the illuminated grave
of Pasteur, across his death mask, and in the company of garish mosaics
depicting Pasteur's great discoveries - in order to realize that Monod's
assiduous search for the secret of life, abundantly recalled in the
memorial volume,43 was inspired by the heroic career of Pasteur.
It is also interesting to recall his elder brother's describing young
Monod's long hesitation in deciding upon a career as a musician or as a
scientist in terms of a family dilemma - whether their talented boy was
going to be a new Beethoven or a new Pasteur." Apparently, Monod,
under the influence of Louis Rapkine, opted to be a new Pasteur.
Indeed, he wished to succeed precisely where the great Maitre failed,
namely in discovering the secret of life. As Monod remarked, acknowl-
edging Pasteur's crucial legacy, bacteria, being a fundamental form of
life, were best suited to reveal the secrets of life.45
SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT IN THE POST WW2 ERA
Other important facets of science that are notably missing from the
memorial volume pertain to the profound transformation in the scale
42. See J. Farley and G. L. Geison, "Science, Politics and Spontaneous

Generation in 19th Century France: The Pasteur-Pouchet Debate," Bull. Hist.
Med., 48 (1974), 161-198.
43. See references by Lwoff (p. 14), Jolit (p. 31), Gros (p. 118), Kepes (p.
155), and Ullmann (p. 167). Judson, The Eight Days of Creation, chap. 10, which
describes Monod's discovery of allostery on the basis of interviews between 1970
and 1975, is entitled "I have discovered the second secret of life."
44. Interview with Ephrussi, Judson, nTe Eight Days of Creation, p. 357.
45. J. Monod, "Du microbe a 1'homme," in Monod and Borek, Of Microbes
and Life, p. 3.
306
and structure of the scientifilc enterprise after World War II. Until
that time science had been a relatively small enterprise and could
have qualified, with few exceptions, as a vocation pursued by a tiny
elite.46 The explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945 and the launching
of the first Sputnik in 1957 (more precisely, governmental but also
scientific responses to these scientific-technological events) created the
conditions for science to become a large-scale operation with many
practitioners.
This exponential growth of science, busily documented by students
of scientometrics,47 had profound implications for the social organiza-
tion of science. Science became an object to be managed and held
accountable, because of its huge scale and cost. Though these changes
in science's social and political standing paralleled the successful phase
of Monod's career, as well as the rise of molecular biology, the authors
of the memorial volume do not seem to perceive any connection
between science's becoming a large-scale and rapidly growing manage-
able enterprise and the successful trajectory of Monod, the transdis-
ciplinary synthesizer, and of sophisticated technology-dependent
molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s.
Lwoff alone draws attention to the fact that Monod's long-time
technician was paid by a government agency for the funding and
coordination of research established at the end of the war, the Centre
National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). The permanent avail-
ability and loyalty of this technician and of other skilled supporting
personnel, as several contributors point out, was absolutely essential
to Monod's work, both in its initial modest phase and in the later
management of his rapidly growing research group. Lwoff also mentions
the crucial role of visiting scientists, who were able to stay at the
Pasteur Institute on a variety of government fellowships, all instituted
46. For collections of personal reminiscences about science in the interwar

period see D. Fleming and B. Bailyn, eds., 7he Intellectual Migration: Europe and
America, 1930-60 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969). W. M.
Elsasser, Memoirs of a Physicist in the Atomic Age (Bristol: Hulger, 1978), pp.
161-189, deals with Parisian research institutes and scientists.
47. D. de SoLla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1963); J-J. Salomon, "Science Policy Studies and the Develop-
ment of Science Policy," in 1. Spiegel-Rossing and D. de Solla Price, eds., Science,
Technology and Society: A Cross Disciplinary Perspective (London: Sage Publica-
tions, 1977), pp. 43-70; see also Scientometrics, a new journal that made its debut
in 1979; and A. M. Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, Mass.:
M.I.T. Press, 1968).
307
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
after World War II, the most important, no doubt, were those of the
U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), established in 1945.48
Though many foreign scientists were attracted to the Pasteur Insti-
tute by the reputation of Lwoff in bacterial and comparative physiology
(this being particularly true of American biochemists wishing to move
after the war to the newly fashionable field of microbiology),49 most of
these visitors ended up promoting Monod's research program. Lwoff,
while always available to advise, was more aloof and tended not to
involve transitory outsiders in his own research. Monod, on the other
hand, always had plenty of suggestions for others. Since he was more
senior than most of the visitors, the net outcome of this interaction was
that, slowly but surely, a permanent freely available stream of minds
and labor flowed into Monod's own research program.
It was of course to Monod's credit that he was able to capitalize on
these resources and at the same time maintain happiness among his
many collaborators. However, this dexterity helps to explain his high
visibility in the scientific community as well as the excellent produc-
tivity of his lab, both important factors in his accumulation of scientific
credit. Since the greater part of Monod's output was collaborative,
including all his major discoveries, the institutional opportunity provided
by his position at the Pasteur is all the more important.
Once again, Lwoff alone (he too became involved in scientific
administration in 1969) seems to have noticed that Monod's leadership,
combined with a gently patemalistic management of the intellectual
(and often private) lives of his numerous dependents, might have
resulted in a disproportionate credit accretion on his behalf. It may not
48. At the same time one must remember that private foundations such as the
Rockefeller and the Guggenheim continued to support scientific exchanges in the
postwar era. For example, Monod received support for traveling within the United
States, as well as a four-year research grant, from the Rockefeller Foundation in
1954 (Pasteur Institute Files, Rockefeller Archive Center). This support came at
a crucial time for Monod, because he had just become Chef de Laboratoire
(Cellular Biochemistry) at the Pasteur and could better direct the flow of re-
sources that he obtained from America. This long-term support was essential for
Monod and helped him to pursue his research progranm on a larger scale.
49. 1 wish to thank Seymour S. Cohen of the department of pharmacological
sciences at SUNY in Stony Brook for stressing this point to me; Professor Cohen
was the first American scientist to visit the Pasteui Institute (as a Guggenheim
fellow) after World War II, in 1947. See Cohen's contribution, "Are/were mito-
chondria and chloroplasts microorganisms?", to Andre Lwoff's anniversary
volume, Monod and Borek, Of Microbes and Man, pp. 129-149.
308
be so accidental that in all the cases of visiting competitors (contribu-

tors Pollock, Luria, and Pardee come easily to mind) it was always
Monod that triumphed. All except Pollock convey the impression that
this was simply because of Monod's superior ability.
In a similar way, contributors who mention Monod's involvement in
institutional reforms at many research establishments, including the
Sorbonne, the Centre de Royaumont pour une Science de L'Homme,
the European Molecular Biological Organization (EMBO), the Salk
Institute, and last but not least the Pasteur Institute, seem unsure
whether these activities belong to his portrait as a scientist. Similarly,
we hear nothing of the social and political context of science, even
though Monod was active in the Lysenko, Medvedev, and other affairs
involving science and politics. One would like to hear more on intemal
French affairs such as the dismissal of Frederic Joliot-Curie from the
directorship of the French Atomic Energy commission in what was
regarded as a tragedy of science. (Incidentally, one of Monod's students
and a contributor to the memorial volume is David Perrin, son of
Francis Perrin, who replaced Joliot-Curie.50) In France the holy alliance
of science and politics has never been kept secret. One can only con-
clude that omitting the political and other aspects of Monod's life is not
just a simple matter of preference or lack of space, as coeditor Lwoff
puts it. Rather, this omission is constitutive of another "myth," namely
the public representation of science as an all-absorbing, everlasting, and
apolitical vocation. In contrast to this public image of science, the
hero's real life contained a good many political and other interests, but
now the custodians of his public image cannot find space for those
other interests.
This concern with adjusting the hero's real life to an idealized
image of the scientist may also explain why the earlier part of Monod's
life (for example, his first decade as an undecided scientist, wasting
an entire year in 1936 at the world center of classical genetics51) is
excluded from the volume, which is topheavy with the later success
stories. Similarly, Monod's efforts to demonstrate science's links to
other cultural and political endeavors were bound to create resentment
among scientists.
Thus, it is perhaps not surprising to find so little in this memorial
volume on Monod's fame-bringing book, Chance and Necessity, which
50. See S. R. Weart, Scientists in Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 1979).
51. Interview with Ephrussiin Judson, Te Eight Days of Creation, p.357.
309
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
corroded public belief in the social and political neutrality of science

by exposing the ideological potential of a science like molecular biol-
ogy."2 Scientists' reluctance to acknowledge this point, not their
entirely legitimate disagreements with this or that philosophical idea of
Monod, resulted in all but three contributors' ignoring his philosophical
ideas and refraining from exploring why the book acquired popularity
and aroused such a controversy.S3 We learn, however, from other
sources that Lwoff simply hated the book.4' The reader would have
much appreciated knowing why something in science so exciting for
the lay public is virtually ignored by leading scientists.
No indication is given, therefore, of the extent to which Monod
might have understood the profoundly ideological role of science in
society (beyond its discredited position as the edge of a rational social
order, or its role as a source of technological benefits of the kind he
encountered in the industrial wing of the Pasteur Institute). This is
especially true since his close links to nonscientist-intellectuals, for
example his close friendship with Albert Camus, are not explored.
Nonetheless, Monod demonstrated in many ways that science is not
unrelated to other social spheres.
SOME CONCLUDING HISTORIOGRAPHIC REMARKS
We have seen so far four different aspects of myth construction in

the collective representation by scientists of a scientist-hero: (1) the
construction of the hero Monod as a mere scientist, whose other
interests are presented as occasional digressions from his all-absorbing
52. See E. J. Yoxen, "The Social Impact of Molecular Biology" (Ph.D. diss.,
Cambridge University, 1978; idem, "Life as a Productive Force: Capitalising upon
Research in Molecular Biology," in L. Levidow and R. M. Young, eds., Science,
Technology and the Labour Process, Marxist Studies, 1 (London: CSE Books,
1980), pp. 66-122.
53. See for example R. Monro, "Monod on Biophilosophy," New Scientist
(9 December 1971), 112-114; idem, "Molecular Theology," Cambridge Rev.
(20 October 1972), 20-24; J. Oppenheimer, "Life and Necessity and Chance
and Man," Quart. Rev. Biol., 47 (1972), 63-67; A. R. Peacocke, "Chance and
Necessity in the Life-Game," Trends Biochem Sci. (May 1977), N-99-100; G. S.
Stent, "Molecular Biology and Metaphysics," in his Paradoxes of Progress (San
Francisco: Freeman, 1978), pp. 115-1 29. For a survey of philosophical responses
to Monod's joint attack on the three sacred cows of the French intellectual
establishment (metaphysical vitalism, dialectical materialism, and catholicism) see
Yoxen, "The Social Impact of Molecular Biology."
54. Judson, TheEightDaysof Creation, p.593.
310
science; (2) the construction of the hero's position as a leader in science

as a derivative of his talents only, while obscuring the power relation-
ship between the hero and his peers, especially the vulnerable groups of
students and women; (3) the construction of the hero's career as only
being related to his making discoveries, while neglecting the crucial role
of scientific institutions in constraining and shaping the conceptual
world of the hero-scientist; (4) the construction of the hero's career
as being unrelated to the social and political standing of science and
scientists, and especially to their relationship with the government.
It must be remembered that practising scientists cannot be expected
to have an outsider's critical perspective. Although the natives' view-
point may be valid in their own framework as an exclusive explanation
of their world order, it has a different explanatory status than that of
the outsideranthropologist. Thus scientists' accounts of science also
have a distinct but limited value for understanding science as a unique
social, political, and cultural system. The very capacity to practice
science depends on belief in a world-view that only an outsider-analyst
can afford to detect as being constructed of mythical components.55
It is thus befitting to conclude this paper by pointing out the his-
toriographic value of this volume-rite in tracing the origins of molecular
biology. As its title indicates - Origins of Molecular Biology: A Tribute
to Jacques Monod - it is a dual attempt to present a publicly certified
image of a hero-scientist, while making a historical claim with regard to
the origins of molecular biology. In view of the fact that scientists'
belief system about science is constrained by a particular world-view
and ethos, one is not surprised that the commemorative volume lacks
a historical perspective on the scientific change that impacted the
research program of the hero and his school.
At no point is it made clear when, why, and how Monod's initial
research in classical bacterial physiology became molecular biology.
Lwoff, the only contributor to survey the entire span of Monod's career
from 1931 to 1976, suggests that the transition occurred between 1948
and 1963. Several other contributors, however, refer to work in the
early 1950s as "not yet" molecular biology. The only other contributor
to make an effort to provide a historical survey of the discovery he
55. See Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life; C. Geertz, "'From the Native's
Point of View': On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding," in J. L.
Dolgin, D. S. Kemnitzer, and D. M. Schneider, eds., Symbolic Anthropology: A
Reader in the Study of Symbols and Meanings (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1977), pp. 480492; Barthes,Mythologies.
311
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
shared (Fran9ois Gros on messenger-RNA) testifies that most of the

work on RNA was done outside the research traditions that later
renamed themselves "molecular biology"; even Monod was rather slow
to grasp the implications of RNA.
Besides the timing of the scientific change involved in the rise of
molecular biology, the memorial volume also highights the problematic
relationships between molecular biology and classical biochemistry,
classical genetics, comparative physiology, evolution, and DNA research.
Speaking of molecular biology as reflected in Monod's research program,
one contributor suggests the importance for Monod of classical bio-
chemistry; another suggests evolution; a third notices the initial lack
of physical chemistry, even though Monod's allostery model would
eventually engage the attention of physical chemists; and Lwoff stresses
Monod's background in comparative physiology. Monod's own public
statements emphasized the role of classical genetics in conjunction with
a physicochemical approach to biology.56
These disparate views nevertheless provide important clues for a
future historical account of molecular biology and of Monod's specific
legacy. They also illuminate the profound difference between Monod's
school of molecular biology and two other schools that pioneered the
phenomenon of scientists' making historical claims already in the
1960s on behalf of their school as the origin of a prestigious new
science. These schools were the American phage genetics school, which
found a spokesman in Gunther Stent57 and which started the genre of
public expression by scientists of their personal sense of historical
importance;58 and the British school of X-ray protein crystallography,
56. See Monod's contribution, entitled "On Chance and Necessity," in F. J.

Ayala and T. Dobzhansky, eds., Studies in the Philosophy of Biology: Reduction
and Related Problems (London: Macmillan, 19 74), pp. 35 7 -3 76.
57. G. S. Stent, "That Was the Molecular Biology That Was," Science, 160
(1968), 390-395; idem, "Waiting for the Paradox," in Cairns, Stent, and Watson,
Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, pp. 3-8. This volume is believed to
have been engineered by Stent; see Streisinger's contribution, which refers to
Stent as rewriting the various contributions. For an evaluation of Stent's historical
claims see R. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macnillan, 1974),
chap. 15; T. H. Jukes, "Members of the Club" (book review of Judson, The Eight
Days of Creation), Nature, 281 (1979), 505-506.
58. For an insightful interpretation see R. C. Lewontin, "Essay Review" (of
Cairns, Stent, and Watson, Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology), J. Hist.
Biol., I (1 968), 155-161.
312
which found its early spokesman in John Kendrew and a later one in
Max Perutz.59
The contrast in defining the content and origins of molecular biology
provided by Monod's memorial volume is all the more important since
historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science who have written
on molecular biology seem to have accepted rather uncritically the
evidence provided by scientist-spokesmen on behalf of their respective
schools, especially the partition of molecular biology's origins between
the school of phage genetics and that of X-ray protein crystallography.60
We learn that unlike these two schools, which professed an innocence
of classical biochemistry even to the degree of antagonism in the case
of the antireductionist standing of Delbruck, the celebrated hero of the
phage group,61 Monod's school, though limited to descriptive and
tactical biochemistry (using it as a tool in tackling problems of cellular
physiology), proceeded to make its first major discovery of the de
novo synthesis of enzymes simply because it addressed the problem of
protein metabolism as outlined in classical biochemistry.
A similar tactical relationship can be detected in Monod's deploy-
ment of classical genetics. Unlike the school of X-ray protein crystal-
lography, which knew nothing of genetics, or the phage group, which
was entirely overwhelmed by the prospects of classical genetics in
uncovering quantum physics-like paradoxes or "new laws of nature"
and eventually succeeding in making the phage an object of classical
genetics, Monod's school ingeniously used classical genetics as a tool
to clarify problems of cellular physiology. How practitioners of these
59. J. C. Kendrew, "How Molecular Biology Started?" (review of Cairns,

Stent, and Watson, Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology), Sci. Amer., 216
(1967), 141-143; idem, "Some Remarks on the Origins of Molecular Biology,"
Biochem. Soc. Symp., 30 (1970), 5-10; M. F. Perutz, "Origins of Molecular
Biology," New Scientist, 31 (January 1980), 326-329. Yet another structurally
minded school in molecular biology, with historical claims of its own, is the
school of structural chemistry in the United States stemming from Linus Pauling:
L. Pauling, "Fifty Years of Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biol-
ogy," Daedalus, 99 (1970), 988-1014; Rich and Davidson, Structural Chemistry.
60. See Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, chaps. 15 and 16.
61. See Cairns, Stent, and Watson,Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology;
Delbruck's "leadership," much celebrated in this volume, apparently pertained to
his many students at Caltech, not to his pre-1945 collaborators S. E. Luria, A. D.
Hershey, and T. F. Anderson, who each had a specific orientation of his own and
did not share the antireductionist stand of Delbruck, as is evidenced in their
contributions; see also Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, chap. 16.
313
PNINA G. ABIR-AM
three different research traditions can all claim themselves as originators

of molecular biology remains an open question for the future.
Another area of divergence between Monod's school and the others
that laid claim to originating molecular biology pertains to the import
of classical biology and evolution. Neither the X-ray crystallographic
school, which was composed of chemists and physicists, nor the phage
genetics school, which was dominated by physical scientists, could
bring resources of classical biology or evolution to bear on molecular
biology. Monod's legacy in these two areas is evident in his philosophy
of molecular evolutionism and also in his opting for a selective, rather
than instructive, theory of allostery.62
It is equally important to note that there is hardly any mention of
DNA in the commemorative volume. This occurrence, together with
the fact that DNA was marginal as well in the endeavors of the other
schools of molecular biology,63 suggests that the history of molecular
biology and that of DNA should not be conflated. DNA assumed a
central and logical position in the edifice of molecular biology, even-
tually becomingits graphical representation,64 only after the elucidation
of the genetic code in the early 1 960s. This logical connection resulted,
however, in a confusion of the largely separate historical records of
DNA and molecular biology.
The fact that history does not always proceed according to the
prescriptions of logic is already known to historians. Even philosophers
of science may someday realize that logical reconstruction is a nice
exercise, despite its lack of historical meaning.65 Indeed, to those who
may insist on conflating the history of DNA with that of molecular
62. See Henri Buc, "Mother Nature and the Design of a Regulatory Enzyme,"
pp. 213-220 in the memorial volume.
63. X-ray crystallography focused on proteins; the other major contender
as originator of molecular biology, the school of phage genetics, focused on
classical genetics analysis of phage. See also Kendrew, "How Molecular Biology
Started?" and "Some Remarks"; Stent, "The Molecular Biology That Was";
Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, chap. 16.
64. See for example the cover of Nature, 248 (1974), celebrating the twenty-
first anniversary of the double helix, as "Molecular Biology Comes of Age"; also
the poster of the conference "Biochemical and Molecular Origins of Embryology",
Ischia-Naples, July 1978.
65. For a classic statement of logical reconstruction of the history of science
see 1. Lakatos, "History of Science and its Rational Reconstruction," Boston
Studies in Phd. of Sci., 8 (1971), 91-136; see also 1. B. Cohen, "History and the
Philosopher of Science," in F. Suppe, ed., The Structure of Scientific Theories
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), pp. 308-360.
314
biology, one can only remind them that the pioneer of the DNA renais-
sance, Erwin Chargaff, is a staunch critic and opponent of molecular
biology.66 Indeed, Chargaff has pointed out that molecular biologists
belatedly appropriated DNA from cell chemists.
One is tempted to conjecture whether it was the second secret of
life (molecular control and communication by allosteric proteins)
discovered by Monod and his school in the late 1950s, rather than the
first secret of life (molecular replication of DNA via complementary
base-pairing) discovered by Watson and Crick in the early 1950s, that
launched molecular biology. Now, more than ever, molecular biologists
need Monod to remind them that science is also a theater of the absurd,
and that the "second" secret of life may have preceded the "first" in
creating molecular biology.
In concluding these historiographic remarks, I feel that the greatest
tribute to Jacques Monod derives from the fact that he managed to
prevent his life from being used as the axis of a scientific mythology.
In spite of the efforts of many contributors to his memorial volume,
the reader remains convinced that there is more to Monod and to
molecular biology than the unidimensional search for the secret of
life.
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to John T. Edsall, Joy Harvey, and Camille

Limoges for their helpful comments, and to Seymour S. Cohen and
Annamaria Torriani for sharing personal recollections of their time at
the Pasteur Institute.
66. See Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire; also P. Abir-Am, "From Biochemistry to

Molecular Biology: DNA and the Acculturated Journey of the Critic of Science
Erwin Chargaff," Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 2 (1980), 3-60.
315

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How Scientists View Their Heroes: Some Remarks on the Mechanism of Myth Construction

Author(s): Pnina G. Abir-Am

Institut d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des Sciences

Scientists generally do not like to read what outsiders have to say

1. B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction

everyday life.2 This affirmation is usually enacted by a systematic

2. This interpretation is based on V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca,

examining the evidence contained in this specific volume on Monod -

of myth as a cultural resource structuring perceptions of reality so that a par-

nonscientific interests (artistic, social, political) are carefully relegated

to be tolerated. Women scientists frequently are denied a fair oppor-

UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS TO ISOLATE THE SCIENTIST FROM

The thirty-two contributors to Monod's memorial volume started

8. On the conversion of knowledge or symbolic capital into power in science

hero even as he emerged as a scientist-hero. It is therefore all the more

9. J. Monod, "De l'adaptation enzymatique aux transitions allosteriques,"

Casting: handsome, tough, courageous, artistic, brilliant ... that

10. Examples of his involvement include the Lysenko affair; "Choisir,"

no discussion at all of what it became a generation later by the time the

geneticist who made seminal contributions to physiological genetics in

14. For an example of Teissier's (1900-) approach in the 1930s, when he

the eminent classical biologists Maurice Caullery, zoologist and cytol-

Monod along the psychoanalytically naive dichotomy of a good guy

16. Monod's foreword to Popper's famous book, which appeared in French

to the fact that his physiological theories were reducible to an exact

as Logique de la dkcouverte scientifique (Paris: Payot, 1973), dates from 1973

19. Stanier's emphasis on Monod's Calvinist background as an important

Stanier's important perception is not augmented, however, because

Protestant Theology in Strasbourg; see Victor Monod, La devalorisation de

been a source of repressed political ambitions, for he obviously aspired

20. By tradition members of the French Protestant grand bourgeoisie gravi-

biochemistry laboratory at the Pasteur Institute, which he had held

THE SCIENTIST-HERO AND HIS MOST DEPENDENT PEERS

Monod's role as teacher and research supervisor in the French tradi-

directorship of the Pasteur Institute. This meant in essence a gradual

"family-oriented" lab of Lwoff and Monod,29 or on how their experi-

woman - provides us with the compelling evidence: "I know better

THE SPECIAL QUALITY OF THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE

So far I have examined the bearing of Monod's memorial volume on

33. For the conceptualization of discourse as articulating both knowledge

35. For the mechanisms of converting symbolic capital into positions of

culminating in his dissertation, the examiners concluded in 1941 that

40. There is no literature specifically on this interpretation, but see Bourdieu,

institutional context that both endowed and constrained him to prob-

SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT IN THE POST WW2 ERA

42. See J. Farley and G. L. Geison, "Science, Politics and Spontaneous

46. For collections of personal reminiscences about science in the interwar

be so accidental that in all the cases of visiting competitors (contribu-

50. See S. R. Weart, Scientists in Power (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-

corroded public belief in the social and political neutrality of science

SOME CONCLUDING HISTORIOGRAPHIC REMARKS

We have seen so far four different aspects of myth construction in

science; (2) the construction of the hero's position as a leader in science

shared (Fran9ois Gros on messenger-RNA) testifies that most of the

56. See Monod's contribution, entitled "On Chance and Necessity," in F. J.

59. J. C. Kendrew, "How Molecular Biology Started?" (review of Cairns,

three different research traditions can all claim themselves as originators

I am very grateful to John T. Edsall, Joy Harvey, and Camille

66. See Chargaff, Heraclitean Fire; also P. Abir-Am, "From Biochemistry to

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