[1][2] Early in his career, Monod was made professor at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and founded the Institut fondamental d’Afrique noire in Senegal.

Though he failed to find the meteorite he sought, he discovered numerous plant species as well as several important Neolithic sites.

Perhaps his most important find (together with Wladimir Besnard) was the Asselar man, a 6,000-year-old skeleton of the Adrar des Ifoghas that many scholars believe to be the first remains of a distinctly black person.

Monod was also politically active, taking part in pacifist and antinuclear protests until only some months before his death.

[6] The scientific bibliography of Théodore Monod includes more than 700 works on topics – from his thesis subject, the Gnathiidae (a family of parasitic Isopoda), to the subject that he held close to his heart until his death: the Scaridae, which he published on in 1994 in collaboration with Canadian research scientist Andrea Bullock.