Monod, Jacques (1910-1976), a French biochemist, shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine with Francois Jacob and Andre Lwoff. The scientists, all members of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, studied the cells of bacteria. They discovered in these cells a class of genes that controls the activity of other genes. Radiation and some chemicals can cause these controlling genes to function improperly. If this happens, the other genes may get out of control and damage the cells. The discovery aided research on cancer, a disease in which uncontrolled cell division takes place.