jacob

< /frɑ̃ˈswa/, 1920–2013, French geneticist: Nobel Prize in Medicine 1965.

a male given name: from a Hebrew word meaning “supplanter.”

noun

1. Old Testament the son of Isaac, twin brother of Esau, and father of the twelve patriarchs of Israel
2. Also called: Jacob sheep any of an ancient breed of sheep having a fleece with dark brown patches and two or four horns

masc. proper name, name of Old Testament patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebecca and father of the founders of the twelve tribes, from Late Latin Iacobus, from Greek Iakobos, from Hebrew Ya’aqobh, literally “one that takes by the heel” (Gen. xxviii:12), a derivative of ‘aqebh “heel.” The most popular name for boys born in the U.S. from 1999 through 2008. Jacob’s ladder, in various transferred uses from 1733, is from Gen. xxviii:12.

1. French geneticist. He shared a 1965 Nobel Prize for the study of regulatory activity in body cells.

1. French geneticist who studied how genes control cellular activity by directing the synthesis of proteins. With Jacques Monod, he theorized that there are genes that regulate the activity of other, neighboring genes. They also proposed the existence of messenger RNA.