EPHRUSSI, BORIS

EPHRUSSI, BORIS (1901–1977), geneticist. Ephrussi was born in Moscow but moved to Paris after the 1917 Revolution, where he graduated in zoology (1922) and obtained his doctorate in experimental embryology (1932) from the University of Paris. A Rockefeller fellowship with George Beadle at California Institute of Technology (1934) determined Ephrussi's career as a geneticist. The German occupation of France forced him into exile in the United States, where he worked mainly at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He became professor of genetics at the Sorbonne, Paris (1945), and director of the newly established Laboratory of Physiological Genetics in Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris (1956). After a period of major organizational difficulties, he moved to the U.S. as professor at Western Reserve University, Cleveland (1962), until he returned to direct the same institute near Paris, now renamed the Center of Molecular Genetics, until 1972. Before 1945 Ephrussi was one of the few internationally recognized French geneticists in France and he largely directed the reorganization of the field after World War II. His collaboration with Beadle helped establish the concept that genes control cellular events. Subsequently he pursued the then highly contentious concept that cytoplasmic factors influenced by external factors are genetically transmitted independently of conventional genes. The experimental validity of his work was subsequently vindicated by the discovery of mitochondrial DNA. His many honors included election to the French Academy of Sciences (1978). (Michael Denman (2nd ed.)