Christian de Duve
| Christian de Duve | |
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de Duve lecturing on the origin of the eukaryotic cell in October 2012
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| Born | Christian René Marie Joseph de Duve 2 October 1917 Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK |
| Died | 4 May 2013 (aged 95) Grez-Doiceau, Belgium |
| Residence | Belgium |
| Citizenship | Belgian |
| Nationality | Belgium |
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| Known for | Cell organelles |
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| Spouse | Janine Herman (m. 1943; d. 2008) |
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Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve (2 October 1917 – 4 May 2013) was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisome and lysosome, 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"). In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented the scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis in a single occasion.
A son of Belgian refugees during the First World War, de Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, Great Britain. His family returned to Belgium in 1920. He was educated by the Jesuits at Onze-Lieve-Vrouwinstituut in 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. 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. He became emeritus professor of Leuven university in 1985, and of Rockefeller in 1988.
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