Biologist François Gros, who notably participated in the discovery of messenger RNA, died Friday at the age of 95, the Academy of Sciences said on Sunday. “François Gros died on February 18”told AFP Etienne Ghys, mathematician and perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, a position that François Gros had held from 1991 to 2000.
Co-discoverer of messenger RNA, the molecular intermediary of the DNA genetic code, his contribution to the deciphering of the gene was crucial. His work paved the way, almost 60 years later, for the use of this technology in the main vaccines used against Covid-19.
This world-renowned researcher was born in Paris on April 24, 1925 into a “non-practicing Jewish” family. He had retreated to Toulouse during the Second World War. “Perpetually at the mercy of a denunciation”he changed his name regularly, he said in his “Scientific Memoirs – Half a Century of Biology” (2003).
François Gros contributed, alongside the most eminent figures in scientific research, to the birth of molecular biology which was to revolutionize the life sciences.