The 1950s and 1960s were the so-called 'golden age' of molecular biology and, in becoming molecular, biology staked a claim to be the definitive life science. This book looks at the emergence of molecular biology in the context of a set of closely linked scientific and philosophical discourses in post-war France, particularly focussing on the work and influence of the French molecular biologists FranA ois Jacob and Jacques Monod. Jacob and Monod made significant scientific breakthroughs in molecular biology in the post-war period, winning the Nobel Prize for their work on gene regulation in...