Edouard Van Beneden

Fascinated by questions surrounding egg formation, fertilization and the early stages of embryo development, Edouard Van Beneden discovered the process of what would later be called meiosis in 1883.

 

É

douard-Joseph-Louis-Marie Van Beneden was born in Louvain on March 5, 1846 and died in Liège on April 28, 1910. He was the son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden (1809-1894), an eminent zoologist and professor at the University of Louvain, who founded the world's first marine research station in Ostend.

Édouard Van Beneden is the only son in a family of five children. After primary school at the Collège du Roi of the University of Louvain, he completed his humanities at the Collège du Petit Séminaire de Saint-Trond, in keeping with the family's Catholic tradition. He returned to his family in Leuven in 1863 after passing his rhetorician's diploma with flying colors. Gifted in mathematics, he had not yet made up his mind as to his future studies. In 1865, he decided on biology after observing his father's preparations of parasitic worms under the microscope.

A rapid ascent

He soon turned to embryology and zoology, fascinated by the discoveries of Theodore Schwann and the theories of Lamarck and Darwin. He soon became independent of his father's fixist (1) scientific theories and beliefs, while still working in the same field. From the late 1860s to the early 1970s, Édouard Van Beneden traveled, particularly in Germany, where he drew inspiration from the best teaching of the time. His 1868 dissertation, " Recherches sur la composition et la signification de l'œuf ", on egg behavior in the different classes of the animal kingdom, which was partly written in Germany, earned him election to the Académie royale de Belgique. In it, he demonstrated that, in all animals, eggs are cells, and that every being therefore originates from a single cell and develops by multiplying it.

His rise to prominence was rapid. By 1870, he was teaching courses in elements of zoology, zoology, comparative anatomy and physiology. Édouard Van Beneden was to be an excellent teacher and quickly climbed the hierarchical ladder. From Lecturer, he became Professor Extraordinaire in 1871, then Professor Ordinaire in 1874, when he was only 32. He became a correspondent of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1870 and a member in 1872. He took over Théodore Schwann's embryology course on the latter's death. He twice refused the post of Rector, knowing that he would not have had the independence of action necessary for the reforms he wished to undertake.

In 1872, Van Beneden went to Brazil, to the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, where he discovered a new species of dolphin(2). In 1879, he explored the coasts of Norway on his own, then repeated the trip the following year with one of his disciples, Charles Julin, to enrich the zoological collections of the University of Liège. In 1880, he founded a periodical with Charles Van Bambeke, Les Archives de biologie(3) , in which his work and that of his students was published.

From 1883, he published a series of papers on the egg ofAscaris megalocephala (a parasitic horse worm). He meticulously observed the egg's maturation mechanisms and uncovered the chromatic reduction process, meiosis, which produces male and female gametes. Given that the egg and sperm are each only half-cells, the process of egg fertilization becomes clear. He demonstrates that the fusion of two half-cells (male and female), each containing half the number of chromosomes, results in a cell with the normal number of chromosomes for the species. He thus discovered the mechanism of heredity. In 1887, he made the second major discovery of his career when, in a work richly illustrated with diagrams and microphotographs, he described what he called the central corpuscle (centrosome) and its behavior during cell division. His work was complemented by research into embryonic development and, in particular, mammalian ontogeny.

After 1890, Van Beneden published less frequently, constantly postponing his publications in order to refine them, judging them too incomplete to be published. He increasingly retired to the countryside, to his château at Ramelot-en-Condroz. In 1909, he was made Doctor Honoris Causa of Cambridge University during the Darwin celebrations(4).

Édouard Van Beneden died on April 28, 1910 of Landry's ascending paralysis (infectious polyneuritis), which he had diagnosed himself three days before his death. Unusually, he died on a cot in his personal laboratory at the Institute of Zoology. Having planned with a few close followers what would happen to his work after his death, it was published posthumously long after his death (until 1940!), in accordance with his instructions.

An outstanding teacher

An outstanding teacher as well as a renowned scientist, Van Beneden's teaching is internationally recognized. An excellent teacher, he trained several generations of students in the natural sciences, exerting a considerable influence. His initiatives had a profound influence on the development of the University of Liège: the introduction of biology into medical studies, the creation of laboratories and the construction of the Institute of Zoology.

He often took his students to the zoological stations of Concarneau (Brittany), Ostend, Ville-Franche sur mer (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur), Naples and Trieste. The Naples zoological station, founded in 1872 by Dohrn, contains, in addition to laboratories and numerous aquariums, one of the most complete libraries on marine zoology. In 1880, the Académie des Sciences asked the Belgian government to rent a site in this zoological station, where, from the following year, some forty Belgian scientists carried out experiments, thus contributing to scientific progress in the field of zoology in Belgium.

An important school of comparative and experimental embryology was formed in Liège around Edouard Van Beneden, and continued after his death.

The consequences of his discoveries

Thomas Hunt Morgan, an American biologist, helped explain Mendel's theory, thanks in part to the theory of meiosis discovered by Van Beneden. Meiosis was thus the beginning of the explanation of variability within a species (chromosomal theory of heredity), i.e. the beginnings of modern genetics.

Édouard Van Beneden was also at the origin of ichthyology in Liège, i.e. the study of fish, and thus of all the modern laboratories affiliated to ULg: Aquarium-Muséum, underwater and oceanographic research station de Calvi, en Corse ,center de formation et de recherches en aquaculture, laboratoire de morphologie fonctionnelle et évolutive,unité de biologie du comportement, laboratoire de biologie moléculaire et de génie génétique, laboratoire d'immunologie - vaccinologie.

Awards and distinctions

• Five-yearly science prize (1871, 1887 and 1891)
• Prix Serres from the Institut de France (1882)
• President of the Science Section of the Académie de Belgique (1902)
• Honorary doctorate from the universities of Jena, Leipzig, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Brussels
• Corresponding member of the Institut de France, the Berlin, Vienna and Strasbourg Academies of Science
• Foreign Associate of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome
• Member of the Academies of Munich, Lisbon, Bologna, Philadelphia, Copenhagen, Leopoldiana-Carolina des Curieux de la Nature à Halles,
• Member of the Institut national de Genève
• Honorary member of the Société de Biologie de Paris
• Honorary member of the Imperial Society of Moscow Naturalists
• Honorary member of the Senkenberg Institute, Frankfurt
• Officer of the Order of Leopold

The Institute of Zoology

By the ^mid-19th century, the rapidly expanding University of Liège was beginning to suffer from a lack of space and suitable teaching facilities (lecture theaters, laboratories, etc.). Professors actively campaigned for the modernization of the university, emphasizing the vital role of teaching and research in the development of society. Among them was Edouard Van Beneden.

In 1870, the Academic Council obtained a promise from the city of Liège that new buildings would be constructed. But it wasn't until 1879 that the project became a reality. On the one hand, Minister Frère-Orban enabled the universities of Liège and Ghent to receive a state loan so that they could equip themselves with scientific facilities commensurate with their mission. On the other hand, Louis Trasenster, promoted to the rectorship, undertook the implementation of this modernization and had eight separate scientific institutes set up, modelled on the German Institutes: the Institute of Astronomy (1882), the Institute of Pharmacy (1883), the Institute of Botany (1883), the Institute of Anatomy (1885), the Institute of Physiology (1888), the Institute of Zoology (1888) and the two Institutes of Chemistry (1888). The Institutes of Anatomy, Physiology and Zoology were built in Outremeuse, on the former grounds of the Hospice des Incurables.

Supervision of the construction of the Institute of Zoology was entrusted to Edouard Van Beneden, who was appointed to the Chair of Zoology and became its founder. He drew up the specifications himself between 1873 and 1878. The work was carried out by architect Lambert Nopius, and lasted from 1885 to 1888. This supervision earned Van Beneden a lawsuit against the Belgian state for unjustified expenses, which was settled in his favor by Leopold II himself.

The building houses a large auditorium, amphitheatres, laboratories, a library, collections of invertebrate animals, the Vertebrate Museum and practical rooms. On the pediment of the main entrance, Edouard Van Beneden placed a bust of Charles Darwin, a medallion of Theodore Schwann and a medallion of his father, Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden.

In 1920, the section of Quai des Pêcheurs between Boulevard Saucy and Rue Grétry was named Quai Edouard Van Beneden, a medallion portrait of the great scientist was set into the amphitheatre and his statue, by the sculptor Braeke, was placed at the entrance to the Institute, which would henceforth bear his name.

In the 50s and 60s, Marcel Dubuisson, Director of the Institute and then Rector of ULg in 1954, had the building renovated and enlarged. The statue of Théodore Schwann, father of cell theory, was unveiled to the left of the entrance. He commissioned a fresco by Paul Delvaux to decorate the entrance hall of the Institute, which, in addition to a 500-seat amphitheatre, was to house the Museum of Zoology and the Aquarium, a sign of his desire to open the Institute to the public. In 1980, the Maison de la Science was added in the right wing of the building, continuing the work of popularizing and presenting science to the general public.

Renilla muelleri, un octocoralliaire des mers tropicales. Modèle n° R.E. 11215 à l'inventaire  / ©Aquarium-Muséum, Jacques Ninane

 Blaschkas

Behind the name Blaschka lies a family of German master glassmakers who created a large collection of animal and plant reproductions in colored glass. The first models were not perfect, as they were based solely on drawings and descriptions that were sometimes not very precise. Van Beneden, needing to illustrate his lessons, commissioned a series of 77 invertebrate models selected from the 1885 Blaschkas catalog. Indeed, for museums and teaching purposes, it was important to be able to show marine animals in a form that brought them closer to reality.

A permanent exhibition in the Blaschkas area of the Aquarium-Muséum features 49 of the 77 models originally ordered. The models have been restored by Isabelle Pirotte, a glass restorer, and are displayed in hermetically sealed cases, lit by LEDs and fiber optics to protect them from the heat. A video shown continuously in the Blaschkas space illustrates this work.

This biography was written by Mathieu Leyder and the ULiège Library team.

(1) Doctrine advocating the immutability of nature over time
(2)Memoir on a new dolphin from Rio de Janero Bay, designated Sotalia brasiliensis (link http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/160192 )
(3) Vol 2, 6 and 10 available on http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/7336
(4) http://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/224253.pdf

Find out more about Édouard Van Beneden's research

Consulter les publications scientifiques Édouard Van Beneden

 

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References

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• BRACHET, Albert. Edouard Van Beneden. 1846-1910. With portrait of the deceased. In: Anatomischer Anzeiger, Jena, t. XX, 1910, p. 246-255.
• BRACHET, Albert. "Notice sur Édouard Van Beneden: membre de l'Académie: né à Louvain le 5 mars 1846, décédé à Liège le 28 avril 1910". In: Annuaire de l'Académie royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique: 1846-1932. Brussels: Académie royale de Belgique, 1923, pp. 166-242.
• DAMAS, Désiré. "Édouard Van Beneden: 1870". In: HALKIN, Léon. Liber Memorialis : L'Université de Liège de 1867 à 1935 : notices biographiques Tome 2 Faculté des Sciences, Ecoles spéciales, Faculté technique. Liège: Rectorat de l'Université de Liège, 1936, pp. 88-101.
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