the essential
A Toulouse CNRS researcher has accomplished a feat: finding Marilyn Monroe’s father using genetics. Narrative.
Besides the Bazacle exhibition which is starting, what is the relationship between the most iconic star and Toulouse? Answer: it was a man from Toulouse who found the father of Marilyn Monroe. This father whom she never knew and whose glaring absence explains, at least in part, the anguish and depression of the star actress, who died of an overdose of barbiturates in August 1962.
As Paris Match tells it, it all started with a crazy bet by François Pomès. The documentary producer will move heaven and earth, starting in 2018, to acquire hair from Norma-Jeane Mortenson. 8 strands in total, purchased from American collector John Reznikoff. A peroxide wick whose DNA is compared to the two descendants of Charles Stanley Gifford, furtive lover among the men frequented by Gladys Pearl Baker, Marylin’s mother, during the Roaring Twenties.
The Toulouse lab succeeds where others have failed
The samples will pass between the slides of the Spanish and Italian laboratory microscopes. In vain. Before landing at the Toulouse Center for Anthrobiology and Genomics (CAGT), a recent laboratory specializing in ancient DNA, “he has real expertise and in principle deciphers the DNA of equines or molluscs several thousand or tens of thousands of years” confirms the CNRS. The director of the laboratory, Ludovic Orlando, was therefore approached by François Pomès “in order to try to identify Marilyn’s father.” After many twists and turns, the analyzes were validated by the Toulouse teams, this unknown father now has a name: Charles Stanley Gifford.
CNRS silver medal 2023
“We won’t remember it for scientific pride and major discoveries for science,” laughs one of the CNRS officials in Toulouse, “but for original collaborations, yes.” Around fifty people work in this laboratory located in the former medical school, near the Quai des Savoirs. CNRS 2023 silver medalist, Ludovic Orlando is research director in molecular archaeology. An essential reference in paleogenomics, the researcher has sequenced some of the oldest genomes known to date. And therefore, one of the most famous.
