Raymond Latarjet

Raymond Latarjet, born in Lyon on October 17, 1911 and died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on June 3, 1998, was a French biologist and radiobiologist. He is the son of André Latarjet, professor of medicine in Lyon. Raymond Latarjet, first a physicist, then a doctor, was for twenty years the undisputed and prestigious leader of French radiobiology and gave it great international renown. He devoted his doctoral theses in science and medicine to ultraviolet rays and their attenuation by atmospheric ozone. By calculation, he establishes the relationship between the thickness of the ozone layer and the genotoxic activity (mutagenic and carcinogenic) of solar ultraviolet rays. This work was resumed in the 1970s. In 1945, Raymond Latarjet was among the very first young French scientists to obtain a scholarship for a one-year stay in the United States. A fruitful stay since he made two first-rate discoveries there and forged links with the greatest teams. He will study the viral mutations caused by ultraviolet rays and, with Salvador Luria, one of the founders of molecular biology, they demonstrate the variability of the infectious power of a bacteriophage during its multiplication cycle. They introduce a new method in the cycle of viruses, by establishing the so-called “Luria-Latarjet” curves, which allow the study of the intracellular cycle of a virus.