Jacques Lucien Monod (9 February 1910 – 31 May 1976) was a French biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965, sharing it with François Jacob and Andre Lwoff "for their discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis".Monod (along with François Jacob) is famous for his work on the E. coli lac operon, which encodes proteins necessary for the transport and breakdown of the sugar lactose (lac).