Edouard Van Beneden

Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden (5 March 1846 in Leuven – 28 April 1910 in Liège) was a Belgian embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist.^[1][2] He was professor of zoology at the University of Liège. He contributed to cytogenetics by his works on the roundworm Ascaris. In this work he discovered how chromosomes organized meiosis (the production of gametes).

Edouard Van Beneden
Edouard Van Beneden
Born	5 March 1846 Leuven
Died	28 April 1910 (1910-04-29) (aged 64) Liège
Citizenship	Belgian
Known for	meiosis
Scientific career
Fields	embryologist
Institutions	University of Liège

He is son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden, a zoologist and paleontologist.

Van Beneden elucidated, together with Walther Flemming and Eduard Strasburger, the essential facts of mitosis, where, in contrast to meiosis, there is a qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells. (See karyotype).^{[3] [4]}

Publications

• Recherches sur la composition et la signification de l'œuf 1868 Full text available from Archive.org PDF
• La maturation de l'oeuf, la fecondation, et les premieres phases du développement embryonnaire des mammifères, d'aprés des recherches faites chez le lapin : communication préliminaire in Bulletins de l'Académie royale de Belgique. 2me.série ; 40(12) 1875

Family

Van Beneden's father, Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (1809–1894) was also a well-known biologist. He introduced two important terms into evolutionary biology and ecology: mutualism and commensalism.^[5]

References

1. Dictionary of Biography Page 141 Houghton Mifflin Company - 2003 "Beneden, Edouard Joseph Louis-Marie van 1846–1910 * Belgian cytologist and embryologist Born in Liege,"
2. Anonymous, 1920. Professor Van Beneden of Liége. Science, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 1333 (16 Jul. 1920), pp. 55–56 [Free PDF https://www.jstor.org/stable/1645676]
3. "Investigation of other materials (amphibians, mammals, plants) as regards the ubiquitous occurrence of indirect nuclear division" Published by Walther Flemming published in German by Springer-Verlag in 1880 in Archiv für Mikroskopische Anatomie, Volume 18. Pages 151-259. Translation published in The journal of Cell Biology Volume 25, 1965
4. La maturation de l'oeuf, la fecondation, et les premieres phases du développement embryonnaire des mammifères, d'aprés des recherches faites chez le lapin : communication préliminaire in Bulletins de l'Académie royale de Belgique. 2me.série ; 40(12) 1875
5. Boucher D.H. 1985. The idea of mutualism, past and future. In D.H. Boucher (ed) The biology of mutualism: ecology and evolution. Oxford University Press. 1–28

Sources

• Hamoir, Gabriel (March 1992). "The discovery of meiosis by E. Van Beneden, a breakthrough in the morphological phase of heredity". Int. J. Dev. Biol. 36 (1): 9–15. PMID 1627480.
• Hamoir, Gabriel (October 1986). "[Edouard Van Beneden, biologist and stoic]". Revue médicale de Liège. 41 (20): 779–85. PMID 3541105.
• Hamoir, Gabriel. "La révolution évolutionniste en Belgique: du fixiste Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden à son fils darwiniste Édouard", Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2001.