Agnes Ullmann

Agnes Ullmann was born on 14 April 1927 in Satu Mare, Transylvania, at the time classed as Hungary, now in Romania. Her family were Jewish Hungarian. She became interested in microbiology after her father's birthday gift of Paul de Kruif ’s book Microbe Hunters. She briefly studied at the University of Cluj, but left to earn her doctorate in microbiology from the University of Budapest.^[2]

After a research visit to Institut Pasteur in 1958/59 working with Jacques Monod, she moved to France in 1960 with the support of Monod, who smuggled her and her husband over the Austria/Hungary border in a Hungarian caravan.^[3][4] With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation she went to the laboratory of Monod at the Institut Pasteur, where she remained for the rest of her career. There she became a professor, laboratory director and in 1982 a member of the Board of Directors.

Ullmann initially dealt with the effects of antibiotics at the Institut Pasteur and was able to elucidate, among other things, the mode of action of streptomycin (as an inhibitor of protein synthesis in bacteria). She also studied the effect of Second Messenger cAMP in the bacterial cell.^[5] In 1967 she showed that cAMP reverses catabolite repression in the bacterium E. coli. Later, she discovered another factor that boosts catabolite repression (catabolite modulator factor, or CMF).

Ullmann subsequently dealt with the mode of action of the whooping cough pathogen and its toxin. She showed that the toxin increases the cAMP production in the host cell and thus disturbs their metabolism. The ability of the toxin to provide other molecules with access to the attacked host cell also helped her to develop vaccines by coupling the genetically engineered whooping cough toxin with antigenic fragments that were to be immunized against.^[6]

In 2002 she received the Robert Koch Medal. She was an honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM). EAM President Philippe Sansonetti recalled all her contributions to microbiology in the "In memoriam Agnes Ullmann" ^[7]

In 1978, with André Lwoff, she published a collection of essays by Jacques Monod^[8] and she published two anthologies in memory of him.^[9][10]

Ullmann became a French citizen in 1966.^[6]

In 2026, Ullman was announced as one of 72 historical women in STEM whose names have been proposed to be added to the 72 men already celebrated on the Eiffel Tower. The plan was announced by the Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo following the recommendations of a committee led by Isabelle Vauglin of Femmes et Sciences [fr] and Jean-François Martins, representing the operating company which runs the Eiffel Tower.^[11][12]

• Ullmann, Agnès; Lwoff, André, eds. (2003). Origins of molecular biology : a tribute to Jacques Monod. Washington, D.C: ASM Press. ISBN 1-55581-281-3. OCLC 53138790.
• Quagliariello, Ernesto; Bernardi, Giorgio; Ullmann, Agnes, eds. (1987). From enzyme adaptation to natural philosophy: heritage from Jacques Monod — proceedings of the Symposium "Jacques Monod and Molecular Biology, Yesterday and Today" held in Trani, Italy, 13-15 December 1986. Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier Science. ISBN 0-444-80887-6. OCLC 15631828.
• Ullmann, Agnès; Danchin, Antoine; Gasser, Francis, eds. (1986). Régulation de l'expression génétique : rôle de l'AMP cyclique (in French). Paris: Hermann. ISBN 2-7056-1416-8. OCLC 14962384.
• Ullmann, Agnes; Jacob, François; Monod, Jacques (1967). "Characterization by in vitro complementation of a peptide corresponding to an operator-proximal segment of the β-galactosidase structural gene of Escherichia coli". Journal of Molecular Biology. 24 (2). Elsevier BV: 339–343. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(67)90341-5. ISSN 0022-2836. PMID 5339877.

• Kurth, Reinhard (2002). "Laudatio für Frau Prof. Dr. Agnes Ullmann" [Commendation for Prof. Agnes Ullman]. robert-koch-stiftung.de (in German). Archived from the original on 10 October 2007. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
• Philippe Sansonetti (2019). "In memoriam Agnés Ullmann (1927-2019)", https://fems-microbiology.org/agnes-ullmann-1927-2019-c/

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