Albert Claude
1898-1983
A Belgian biochemist who graduated from the University of Liège, Albert Claude revolutionized cell biology by inventing cell fractionation by centrifugation and producing the first images of cells using an electron microscope. These discoveries earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974.
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Albert Claude was born on August 23, 1898, in Longlier, a small village in the Belgian Ardennes, in the province of Luxembourg. He was the youngest of four children. His father, Florentin Joseph Claude, was a baker, and his mother, Marie Glaudicine Watriquant, was a homemaker.
Tragedy struck this modest family early on. When Albert was only three years old, his mother developed breast cancer. She died when he was just seven. This traumatic event had a profound impact on his life and, according to some biographers, led him to pursue a career in cancer research.
From factory to university: an unusual path
After his mother's death, the family moved to Athus, a steel town near the Luxembourg border. The community there was German-speaking. This early learning of German would prove decisive for Albert Claude's future career.
At the age of just twelve, Albert Claude left school to become an apprentice worker at the Athus-Grivegnée steelworks. At a time when schooling was not compulsory, this was not unusual. He obtained a diploma in industrial design at the age of seventeen, a technical training that developed his manual skills – a skill that would prove invaluable in his future scientific experiments.
Secret agent during the Great War
In 1914, Belgium was invaded by Germany. Albert Claude, then aged sixteen and fluent in German, enlisted in 1916 as a volunteer with the British Intelligence Service, the British Army's intelligence service in occupied Belgium. This perilous mission led to him being captured twice by the Germans and interned in camps.
His heroic service earned him several distinctions: the British War Medal, the Inter-Allied Medal, and a commendation signed by Winston Churchill, then British Minister of War.
Providential access to university
After the war, a ministerial decree in 1919 gave veterans the opportunity to begin university studies without a high school diploma. This exceptional measure allowed Albert Claude, who had never completed his Greek and Latin studies, to enter higher education.
In 1921, he passed the entrance exam for the École des Mines de Liège. But his vocation took a different turn: in 1922, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Liège. It was there that he met Marcel Florkin , a future renowned biochemist, with whom he formed a lasting friendship.
He excelled in his medical studies. For his doctoral thesis, he worked in Louis Derlez's laboratory on the transplantation of S-37 cancer cells into the subcutaneous tissue of rats. In 1928, he obtained his doctorate in medicine, surgery, and obstetrics, a feat accomplished in just six years by this former steelworker who had never passed his high school diploma.
Postdoctoral training in Berlin
His research in oncology earned him a travel grant for the 1928-1929 academic year. Albert Claude chose Berlin, where he first studied at the Institut für Krebsforschung (Cancer Research Institute) at the University of Berlin, directed by Ferdinand Blumenthal. There he worked on the possible transfer of breast cancer in mice by bacteria. Demonstrating that the observed effect was the result of contamination of the bacterial culture by cancer cells, Claude came into conflict with the famous Blumenthal. The young Belgian researcher was proven right against the established authority, early evidence of his commitment to scientific truth.
He then continued his training at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem, in the tissue culture laboratory of Professor Albert Fischer, a Danish scientist. There he learned the then-fledgling techniques of in vitro animal cell culture, which would prove essential for the rest of his career.
The American adventure at the Rockefeller Institute
Back in Belgium, Albert Claude obtained a grant from the Belgian American Educational Foundation for a research stay in the United States. In the summer of 1929, he joined the Rockefeller Institute in New York (now Rockefeller University), where he would remain for twenty years. He joined the laboratory of James B. Murphy, head of the pathology department, with the mission of isolating the agent responsible for Rous sarcoma, a cancerous tumor discovered in 1911 in chickens by Peyton Rous. At the time, it was not yet known whether this agent was a virus, as the modern concept of viruses did not yet exist.
To isolate this mysterious agent, Albert Claude developed a revolutionary technique: cell fractionation by differential centrifugation. He gently crushed the infected cells with a mortar and pestle, then separated the subcellular components by density using cycles of centrifugation at increasing speeds. This method enabled him to successively isolate the nuclei, mitochondria, and small particles that he called "microsomes."
In 1938, he published his first significant results, identifying the presence of proteins, lipids, and RNA in the most active fraction of the tumor extract. It was not until much later, in the 1950s, that it was demonstrated that RNA constituted the genetic material of the Rous virus.
In 1943, Albert Claude published a groundbreaking article on his observations of the cytoplasm, which caught the attention of the Interchemical Corporation of New York, which owned one of the few electron microscopes in the country. This unusual collaboration between an academic laboratory and a private company resulted in 1945 in the first electron microscope image of an entire cell, produced by Claude, Keith Porter, and Ernest Fullam.
In 1946, he published his two seminal articles codifying the principles of differential centrifugation in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. This work laid the foundations for modern cell biology.
In 1935, he married Julia Gilder, with whom he had a daughter, Philippa, who became a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin. The couple later divorced.
Claude acquired American citizenship in 1941.
Return to Belgium at the Jules Bordet Institute
In 1949, "reluctantly" in his own words ("It was a mistake," he would later say), Albert Claude left New York to accept the position of scientific director of the Institut Jules Bordet in Brussels, a cancer research institute affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the Free University of Brussels.
There, he created the Laboratory of Cytology and Experimental Cancer Research, which he transformed within a few years into one of the leading institutions in Europe for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Appointed professor at the ULB Faculty of Medicine, he never taught there, preferring to devote himself entirely to research.
Albert Claude continued his research into the action of carcinogens and the role of immunization in tumor resistance. His experimental standards and unusual working habits were the subject of mixed comments, but he continued on his path with rigor and simplicity.
Consecration and end of career
In 1971, after retiring from the ULB, Albert Claude joined the Catholic University of Louvain at the invitation of his colleague and friend Christian de Duve. The UCL created the Laboratory of Cell Biology and Cancer Research for him in Louvain-la-Neuve, and he became its first director. However, his age and fragile health prevented him from attending regularly.
Honors rained down on this researcher who had long remained in the shadows. In 1970, he received the prestigious Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1971, the Rockefeller Institute awarded him an honorary doctorate; on this occasion, George Palade praised him as a "very wise, very noble, highly honored and beloved prince among men of science."
On October 10, 1974, the Nobel Committee announced that the Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Albert Claude, Christian de Duve, and George Emil Palade "for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell." He was then 76 years old.
For the occasion, he wrote an atypical autobiography that traces the history of his native village since the Carolingian era and ends, for himself, with his childhood, marked by the tragic death of his mother, even though he argues, as a good rationalist, that this could not have influenced his scientific vocation.
The man and his legacy
Albert Claude was a man of extreme simplicity and great discretion. A friend of famous painters such as Diego Rivera and Paul Delvaux, and musicians such as Edgard Varèse, he cultivated interests far beyond science.
He passed away on May 22, 1983, at the age of 84, in his home in Ixelles, where he lived in seclusion with his sister and brother.
Major scientific publications
- Claude A., Concentration and purification of chicken tumor I agent, Science, 87: 467-468, 1938
- Claude A., Chemical composition of the tumor-producing fraction of chicken tumor 1., Science, 213-214, 1939
- Claude A., Fractionation of mammalian liver cells by differential centrifugation: II. Experimental procedures and results, Journal of Experimental Medicine, 84: 61-89, 1946
- Claude A., Studies on cells: Morphology, chemical constitution, and distribution of biochemical functions, Harvey Lectures, 1947-1948, 43: 121-164, 1950
Consult Albert Claude's scientific publications
Scientific awards
- 1970: Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (Columbia University)
- 1974: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Christian de Duve and George E. Palade)
- 1974: Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize
- Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold II
- Honorary doctorates from the universities of Modena, Brno, Liège, Leuven, Ghent, and Rockefeller
- Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Fine Arts of Belgium
- Honorary member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium
- Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
