Lwoff, André Michel

Born May 8, 1902, in Ainy-le-Chateau, department of Allier. French microbiologist.

Lwoff graduated from the medical school of the University of Paris. He worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris from 1921 to 1958 and became a professor at the University of Paris in 1959. Since 1969 he has been director of the National Cancer Research Institute. He was president of the International Association of Microbiological Societies from 1962 to 1970.

Lwoff’s main research has dealt with microbial growth factors, viral physiology, and enzyme induction and repression. He and A. Gutman demonstrated the hereditary nature of lysogeny, linking it to the existence of a noninfectious form of virus (prophage) in lysogenic bacteria. Working with other scientists, he discovered that ultraviolet rays can induce the development of prophages (1950).

Lwoff is a member of a number of foreign academies of science and a foreign member of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1967). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for research on the regulation of protein synthesis in bacteria (1965, jointly with F. Jacob and J. Monod).