The Gold Medal of the French National Center of Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS), the highest scientific distinction in France, is awarded this year to Jules Hoffmann, Emeritus Research Director at CNRS and professor at the University of Strasbourg, France. Hoffmann is a biologist of international renown and has devoted his work to the study of genetic and molecular mechanisms responsible for innate immunity in insects.

Hoffmann studied Biology and Chemistry and received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Strasbourg, in 1969. His post-doctoral training was at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry at Philipps-University, Marburg an der Lahn, Germany, in 1973–1974. From 1964–1968, he was a Research Assistant at CNRS and became a Research Associate in 1969. Between 1978 and 2005, he was Director of the CNRS research unit focused on the immune response and development in insects, and from 1993 to 2005 he was Director of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of CNRS in Strasbourg. In 2007, he became President of the French Academy of Sciences.

• New insights into Drosophila larval haemocyte functions through genome-wide analysis
  P. Irving, J.-M. Ubeda, D. Doucet, L. Troxler, M. Lagueux, D. Zachary, J. A. Hoffmann, C. Hetru, M. Meister,
  Cell. Microbiol. 2005, 7(3), 335–350.
  DOI: 10.1111/j.1462-5822.2004.00462.x
• Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS