Christian de Duve

Christian de Duve was a Belgian cytologist and biochemist who discovered two previously unknown structures inside animal cells, work that substantially expanded the known internal architecture of the cell. Using the technique of cell fractionation, which separates a cell's contents by spinning them at high speed in a centrifuge, de Duve identified in the 1950s the lysosome, a membrane-bound compartment containing digestive enzymes that break down waste material and worn-out cellular components, and shortly afterward the peroxisome, a separate compartment involved in breaking down fatty acids and neutralizing toxic byproducts such as hydrogen peroxide. Beyond these specific discoveries, de Duve contributed important scientific vocabulary still used throughout cell biology today, coining the terms autophagy, describing a cell's own process of digesting and recycling its internal components, along with endocytosis and exocytosis, the processes by which cells take in and expel material across their outer membrane. De Duve shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Albert Claude and George Palade for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell, and he later spent much of his career researching the biochemical origins of life while affiliated with both the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and Rockefeller University in New York.