François Chapeville (1924–2020) – in memoriam

Abstract

François Chapeville (Franciszek Chrapkiewicz), an outstanding Polish biochemist, spent his entire adult life in France. After graduating in veterinary and biochemistry there, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Fritz Lipmann laboratory at Rockefeller University in New York. There, he conducted studies that proved that the genetic information encoded in DNA is deciphered in the process of protein biosynthesis via adapter tRNA molecules (adapter hypothesis). In the years 1979–1991 he was appointed director of Jacques Monod Institute of Molecular Biology at the University VII in Paris. He was a great promoter of Polish-French cooperation in the natural sciences. He passed away in Paris at the age of 96. He was buried in his hometown of Strzyżów in the Podkarpacie region.