Christian de Duve

Christian de Duve
ForMemRS, Viscount de Duve
de Duve lecturing on the origin of the eukaryotic cell in 2012
Born
Christian René Marie Joseph de Duve

(1917-10-02)2 October 1917
Thames Ditton, Surrey, England
Died4 May 2013(2013-05-04) (aged 95)
Grez-Doiceau, Belgium
NationalityBelgian
Alma mater
Known forCell organelles
Children4, including Thierry
Awards
See list
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions

Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve (2 October 1917 – 4 May 2013) was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist.[2] He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisomes and lysosomes, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Albert Claude and George E. Palade ("for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell").[3] In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis on a single occasion.[4][5][6][7][8]

The son of Belgian refugees during the First World War, de Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England.[9] His family returned to Belgium in 1920. He was educated by the Jesuits at Our Lady College, Antwerp, and studied medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven. Upon earning his MD in 1941, he joined research in chemistry, working on insulin and its role in diabetes mellitus. His thesis earned him the highest university degree agrégation de l'enseignement supérieur (equivalent to PhD) in 1945.[10]

With his work on the purification of penicillin, he obtained an MSc degree in 1946. He went for further training under (later Nobel Prize winners) Hugo Theorell at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and Carl and Gerti Cori at the Washington University in St. Louis. He joined the faculty of medicine at Leuven in 1947. In 1960 he was invited to the Rockfeller Institute (now Rockefeller University). With mutual arrangement with Leuven, he became professor in both universities from 1962, dividing his time between Leuven and New York. In 1974, the same year he received his Nobel Prize, he founded the ICP, which would later be renamed the de Duve Institute.[11] He became emeritus professor of the University of Louvain in 1985, and of Rockefeller in 1988.[12]

De Duve was granted the rank of Viscount in 1989 by King Baudouin of Belgium. He was also a recipient of Francqui Prize, Gairdner Foundation International Award, Heineken Prize, and E.B. Wilson Medal. In 1974, he founded the International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology in Brussels, eventually renamed the de Duve Institute in 2005. He was the founding President of the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards.[13] He died by legal euthanasia after long suffering from cancer and atrial fibrillation.[14][15]

  1. ^ "Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660–2015". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 15 October 2015.
  2. ^ Blobel, Günter (2013). "Christian de Duve (1917–2013) Biologist who won a Nobel prize for insights into cell structure". Nature. 498 (7454): 300. Bibcode:2013Natur.498..300B. doi:10.1038/498300a. PMID 23783621.
  3. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1974". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
  4. ^ Christian de Duve on Nobelprize.org Edit this at Wikidata
  5. ^ de Duve, C. "A rather ordinary person". Web of Stories. Retrieved 4 May 2017.
  6. ^ Free to view video interview with Christian de Duve provided by the Vega Science Trust
  7. ^ Biography, The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  8. ^ Retrospective: Christian de Duve, 1917–2013 Archived 15 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine, asbmb.org. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  9. ^ Denise Gellene (6 May 2013). "Christian de Duve, 95, Dies; Nobel-Winning Biochemist". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
  10. ^ de Duve, Christian (2004). "My love affair with insulin". Journal of Biological Chemistry. 279 (21): 21679–21688. doi:10.1074/jbc.X400002200. PMID 15023999.
  11. ^ "Institut de Duve". deduveinstitute.be. Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  12. ^ Tricot, JP (2006). "Nobel prize winner Christian de Duve. From insulin to lysosomes". Hormones. 5 (2): 151–5. doi:10.14310/horm.2002.11179. PMID 16807228.
  13. ^ UNESCO Media Services (17 May 2013). "The Director-General Pays Tribute to the Memory of Professor Christian de Duve". UNESCO. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).