BIOLOGIST

Christian de Duve

1917 - 2013

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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, 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"). In addition to peroxisome and lysosome, he invented scientific names such as autophagy, endocytosis, and exocytosis on a single occasion. The son of Belgian refugees during the First World War, de Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, England. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. Christian de Duve is the 41st most popular biologist (up from 44th in 2019), the 373rd most popular biography from United Kingdom (up from 381st in 2019) and the 12th most popular British Biologist.

Christian de Duve is most famous for his discovery of lysosomes in the late 1960s. Lysosomes are organelles that digest macromolecules, such as proteins and lipids, and then break them down into smaller molecules.

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Among BIOLOGISTS

Among biologists, Christian de Duve ranks 41 out of 1,097. Before him are George Smith, Trofim Lysenko, Barbara McClintock, John Edward Gray, Rachel Carson, and Albert Claude. After him are Karl von Frisch, Ada Yonath, Richard Henderson, Peter Simon Pallas, Harald zur Hausen, and Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1917, Christian de Duve ranks 12. Before him are John Fenn, Arthur C. Clarke, Rodney Robert Porter, Ilya Prigogine, Frederica of Hanover, and James Rainwater. After him are Ella Fitzgerald, Marsha Hunt, John Kendrew, Dean Martin, Eric Hobsbawm, and Herbert A. Hauptman. Among people deceased in 2013, Christian de Duve ranks 16. Before him are Heinrich Rohrer, Võ Nguyên Giáp, Frederick Sanger, Robert Coleman Richardson, Mohammed Omar, and Peter O'Toole. After him are J. J. Cale, Giuliano Gemma, François Jacob, Giulio Andreotti, Paul Walker, and Douglas Engelbart.

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In United Kingdom

Among people born in United Kingdom, Christian de Duve ranks 373 out of 8,785. Before him are Ken Loach (1936), Rod Stewart (1945), Peter Mayhew (1944), Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1884), Joe Cocker (1944), and Christopher Marlowe (1564). After him are Olivia Newton-John (1948), Brian Jones (1942), Richard Laurence Millington Synge (1914), Alec Guinness (1914), David Lloyd George (1863), and Arthur Evans (1851).

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Among BIOLOGISTS In United Kingdom

Among biologists born in United Kingdom, Christian de Duve ranks 12. Before him are Alfred Russel Wallace (1823), John Boyd Orr (1880), Thomas Henry Huxley (1825), John Sulston (1942), Francis Crick (1916), and John Edward Gray (1800). After him are Richard Henderson (1945), Gregory Winter (1951), George Shaw (1751), Michael Houghton (1949), Richard Owen (1804), and Archibald Hill (1886).

British born Biologists

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