Clotilde-Camille DeFlandre

Clotilde-Camille Deflandre (November 21, 1871 – June 7, 1946) was a French scientist primarily known for her discovery with her mentor Paul Carnot of Hémopoïétine" (erythropoietin). She also pioneered work that led to the development of organ transplantation. She was the first woman in France to receive both a "docteur en médicine” (doctorate in medicine) and a docteur ès naturel sciences (doctorate in natural sciences).

Deflandre was born in the 7th arrondissement of Paris on November 21, 1871. Her father, Gustave Edouard Deflandre (1851-1909) was a railroad employee, a composer of religious music, and an organist at Dom Rue Simart 3 in Paris. Her mother, Marie Eugénie Giboz (1848-1938), was born in Autouillet, a commune in the Yvelines department of Northern France. She was working as a shop clerk at the time of her marriage to Deflandre in Paris on Sept 14, 1871. The Deflandres had three children, Jules Gustave (1870-1921), Clotilde and Georges Edouard (1876- ). Jules Gustave was the father of the paleogeologist Georges Deflandre (1897-1973).

In 1895, Mlle. Deflandre was working in the laboratory of Augustin Nicolas Gilbert at the hospital Broussais in Paris with Carnot. Her study, examining the ability of skin grafts from black guinea pigs to persist in white guinea pigs, had a profound effect on the modern field of organ transplantation and was cited by Peter Medawar winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for his work on immunocompetence. Medawar referring to her paper stated that ”it has been known for fifty years that if black guinea pig skin is grafted to a white area on the same animal, a process that may non-committally be called infection takes place: the white skin that surrounds the black graft blackens centrifugally. Conversely, white skin grafted to a black area in due course blackens.” He formulated the hypothesis that differentiated cells in the adult organism “breed true and preserve forever in cellular inheritance their specificity of histological type", an important concept that led to the further development of tissue transplantation.

In 1903, Mlle. Deflandre received a docteur-ès-sciences from the University of Lille on “Fonction adipogénique du foie dans la série animale” (The adipogenic function of the liver in a series of animals) again with Carnot and Gilbert in Paris. She was only the fourth woman to receive a docteur-ès-sciences in France. The others included the astronomer Dorothea Klumpke, Mlle. Rodeau- Lozeau and the Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie. Deflandre's work grew out of the interest of 19th century biologists, especially Claude Bernard, on the metabolic functions of the liver. She methodically studied adipo -hepatic function in a series of invertebrates and vertebrates. She also examined the ability of a fatty liver to repair damage from drugs such as cocaine

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