Christian de Duve

He lived a long life and suffered from numerous diseases, including cancer, when he was in his nineties. Long suffering from physical ailments, he decided to end his life by legal euthanasia and died on 4 May 2013, surrounded by his children.

Christian René Marie Joseph de Duve was born on 2 October 1917, in Great Britain, to Belgian refugees, Alphonse de Duve and wife Madeleine Pungs, during the First World War. His father was a shopkeeper. The family returned to Belgium in 1920 after the war ended.

He grew up to be a bright and curious boy who performed well in studies. As a young boy, he was interested more in literary branches than in science. Nevertheless he decided to study medicine because of its appealing career prospects.

He joined the Catholic University of Leuven in 1934, aspiring to specialize in endocrinology. As a medical student, he joined the laboratory of the physiologist Joseph P. Bouckaert.

In 1940, Belgium was invaded by Germany, and de Duve joined the army to serve in the World War II. He was captured by the Germans almost immediately, but managed to escape.

He resumed his studies and obtained his MD in 1941. By this time, however, he had lost all interest in practicing medicine and was more inclined towards research.

After receiving his MSc, Christian de Duve trained in the laboratory of Hugo Theorell at the Nobel Medical Institute in Stockholm for 18 months during 1946-1947. Following this he worked with the husband-wife pair of Carl and Gerti Cori at Washington University in St. Louis.

Christian de Duve joined the faculty of the medical school of the Catholic University of Leuven in 1947 to teach physiological chemistry. He became a full professor in 1951, the same year when he rediscovered glucagon.

Cell biologists Albert Claude and George E. Palade had already performed some pioneering work in cell physiology at the Rockefeller University. De Duve built on their earlier research and used Claude’s recently developed centrifugal techniques to separate cell parts.

Further experiments in the same direction led to the discovery of the lysosome. Following this discovery, other researchers proceeded to identify more than 50 lysosomal enzymes and some genetic diseases that result when an enzyme either is absent or does not function properly.

In 1962, he was appointed a professor at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, now the Rockefeller University. He retained his appointment with Leuven and simultaneously headed the research laboratories at Leuven and at Rockefeller University. The Leuven University was split into two separate universities in 1969, and de Duve joined the French-speaking side of Université catholique de Louvain.

Christian de Duve made numerous significant contributions to the understanding of the internal workings of cells. His rediscovery of glucagon and discoveries of lysosome and peroxisome helped understand the biology of Tay-Sachs disease along with several other genetic diseases.