Pierre Chambon

Pierre Chambon (7 February 1931 – 5 May 2026) was a French molecular biologist who the founder of the Institute for Genetics and Cellular and Molecular Biology in Strasbourg, France. He was one of the leading molecular biologists who utilized gene cloning and sequencing technology to first decipher the structure of eukaryotic genes and their modes of regulation. Chambon published over 1,000 scientific articles. His major contributions to science include the identification of RNA polymerase II (B), the identification of transcriptional control elements, the cloning and dissection of nuclear hormone receptors and the revealing of their structure and demonstrating how they contribute to human physiology. His group was also one of the first to demonstrate, biochemically and electron-microscopically, that the nucleosome is the smallest unit of chromatin. He accomplished much of his work from the 1970s to the 1990s.