Élie Léo Wollman (July 4, 1917 – June 1, 2008) was a French microbial geneticist who first described

plasmid A plasmid is a small, extrachromosomal DNA molecule within a cell that is physically separated from chromosomal DNA and can replicate independently. They are most commonly found as small circular, double-stranded DNA molecules in bacteria and ...

s (what he termed "episomes"), and served as vice director of research for the

Pasteur Institute The Pasteur Institute (, ) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. Th ...

for twenty years. He was awarded the 1976 Grand Prix Charles-Leopold Mayer by the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

and Chevalier of the French

Legion of Honour The National Order of the Legion of Honour ( ), formerly the Imperial Order of the Legion of Honour (), is the highest and most prestigious French national order of merit, both military and Civil society, civil. Currently consisting of five cl ...

. He is the son of microbiologists at the Pasteur Institute, Eugène and Elisabeth Wollman, and the father of Francis-André Wollman, another prominent scientist.

Research

* In his lab at the

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

Wollman played a key role in the elucidation of the organization of genetic material. * Developed the experimental method of interrupted mating, which underpinned the gene mapping of bacterial chromosomes. This work laid the foundation for Francois Jacob's

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

-winning work. * With Francois Jacob, he published a monograph, ''Sexuality and the genetics of bacteria'' (French title: ''La sexualité des bactéries''), in 1959.

Selected publications

* *

References

External links

Robert Dantzer and Keith W. Kelley, "Elie Wollman", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2009)
1917 births 2008 deaths Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences French geneticists Members of the Académie Française French molecular biologists Phage workers Knights of the Legion of Honour Members of the French Academy of Sciences {{geneticist-stub