In 1832 de Lesseps was appointed vice-consul at Alexandria, and in 1833 he became consul in Cairo, and soon afterwards given the management of the consulate general at Alexandria, until 1837. Near the end of 1837 he returned to France, and on 21 December married Agathe Delamalle (Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, 15 October 1819 – Paris, 13 July 1853), daughter of the prosecuting attorney at the court of Angers. They had five sons.
In 1839 he was appointed consul at Rotterdam, and in the following year transferred to Málaga, the ancestral home of his mother's family. In 1842 he was sent to Barcelona, and soon afterwards promoted to the grade of consul general. From 1848 to 1849 he was minister of France at Madrid.
In 1849 the government of the French Republic sent him to Rome to negotiate the return of Pope Pius IX to the Vatican. He tried to negotiate an agreement whereby Pope Pius could return peacefully to the Vatican but also ensuring the continued independence of Rome. But during negotiations, the elections in France caused a change in the foreign policy of the government.
He was created on 30 August 1851 the 334th Commander and then the 200th Grand Cross of the Order of the Tower and Sword.
De Lesseps then retired from the diplomatic service, and never again occupied any public office. In 1853 he lost his wife and his son Ferdinand Victor at a few days' interval. In 1854, the accession to the viceroyalty of Egypt of Said Pasha gave de Lesseps a new impulse to act upon the creation of a Suez Canal.
Said Pasha invited de Lesseps to pay him a visit, and on 7 November 1854 he landed at Alexandria; on the 30th of the same month Said Pasha signed the concession authorizing him to build the Suez Canal.
De Lesseps died at Château de La Chesnaye in Guilly, Vatan, Indre, on 7 December 1894. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
His name was used in a speech by Egyptian President Gamal Nasser as the codeword to order the raiding of the Suez Canal Company's offices on 26 July 1956, the first step to its nationalization. In the course of the raid and seizure of the canal by Nasser, the statue of de Lesseps at the entrance of the Suez Canal was removed from its pedestal, to symbolize the end of European ownership of the waterway. The statue now stands in a small garden of the Port Fouad shipyard.
Parker, Matthew. Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time - the Building of the Panama Canal. New York: Doubleday,
Transformation (genetics)
In molecular biology, transformation is the genetic alteration of a cell by the direct uptake and expression of DNA from its surroundings.
Transformation occurs naturally in some species of bacteria, and can also be done artificially. Bacteria that are capable of being transformed, whether naturally or artificially, are called "competent".
Transformation is one of three processes by which outside genetic material may be brought into bacterial cells. The other two are conjugation (transfer of genetic material between two bacterial cells in direct contact), and transduction (injection of foreign DNA by a bacteriophage into the host).
Transformation may also used to describe the insertion of new genetic material into nonbacterial cells, such as animal and plant cells. Introduction of foreign DNA into eukaryote cells is usually called "transfection".
Transformation was first demonstrated in 1928 by British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith. Griffith discovered that a harmless strain of "Streptococcus pneumoniae" could be made virulent after being exposed to heat-killed virulent strains.
Griffith thought some "transforming principle" from the heat-killed strain was responsible for making the harmless strain virulent. In 1944 this transforming principle was identified as being genetic by Oswald Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty. They isolated DNA from a virulent strain of "S. pneumoniae" and using just this DNA were able to make a harmless strain virulent. They called this uptake and incorporation of DNA by bacteria 'transformation'. See Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment.
The results of these experiments were at first sceptically received by the scientific community. Not until the discovery of other methods of genetic transfer (conjugation in 1947 and transduction in 1953) by Joshua Lederberg were Avery's experiments accepted. Transformation did not become routine procedure in laboratories until 1972 when Cohen successfully transformed "Escherichia coli" by treating the bacteria with calcium chloride. This created an efficient and convenient procedure for transforming bacteria and opened the way for biotechnology and research.
Transformation of animal and plant cells was also investigated with the first transgenic mouse being created by injecting a gene for a rat growth hormone into a mouse embryo in 1982.
In 1907 a bacterium that caused plant tumors, "Agrobacterium tumefaciens", was discovered and in the early 1970s the tumor inducing agent was found to be a DNA plasmid called the Ti plasmid. By removing the genes in the plasmid which caused the tumour and adding in new genes researchers were able to infect plants with "A. tumefaciens" and let the bacteria insert their chosen DNA into the genomes of the plants.
Not all plant cells are susceptible to infection by "A. tumefaciens," so other methods were developed including electroporation and micro-injection. Particle bombardment was made possible with the invention of the Biolistic Particle Delivery System (gene gun) by John Sanford in 1990.
Charles Ranhofer
Charles Ranhofer (November 7, 1836, Saint-Denis, France — October 9, 1899, New York) was the chef at the famous Delmonico's Restaurant in New York from 1862 to 1876 and 1879 to 1896. Ranhofer wrote "The Epicurean", (1894), a cookbook of over 1,000 pages, similar in scope to Escoffier's "Le Guide Culinaire".
Ranhofer was sent to Paris at the age of 12 to begin his training by studying pastry-making, and at 16 became the private chef for the prince d'Hénin, comte d'Alsace. In 1856 he moved to New York to become the chef for the Russian consul, and later worked in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans.
He returned to France in 1860 for a short time, where he arranged balls for the court of Napoleon III at the Tuileries Palace, but then came back to New York to work at what was then a fashionable location, "Maison Dorée". In 1862, Lorenzo Delmonico hired him for Delmonico's Restaurant, and it was there that Ranhofer made his real fame, though others say that he made the fame of the restaurant as well. At that time, Delmonico's was considered the finest restaurant in the United States. He was the chef at Delmonico's until his retirement in 1896, except for a short break from 1876 and 1879 when he owned the "Hotel American" at Enghien-les-Bains.
Ranhofer invented or made famous a number of dishes that Delmonico's was known for, such as Lobster Newberg, and had a talent for naming dishes after famous or prominent people—particularly those who dined at Delmonico's--as well as his friends, and events of the day. Examples include:
"Many others may be found under "List of foods named after people.""
Ranhofer did not invent baked Alaska, but he popularized it in 1876 when he named it in honor of the newly acquired Alaskan territory.
Ranhofer and his wife Rose had five children: three sons and two daughters. He died at home of Bright's Disease in 1899. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Malibu, California