Christian De Duve life and biography

Christian René, viscount de Duve (born 2 October 1917) is a Nobel Prize-winning cytologist and biochemist. De Duve was born in Thames Ditton, Surrey, Great Britain, as a son of Belgian refugees.

De Duve was educated by the Jesuits at Onze-Lieve-Vrouwecollege in Antwerp, before studying at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he became a professor in 1947. He specialized in subcellular biochemistry and cell biology and discovered peroxisomes and lysosomes, cell organelles.

Christian de Duve was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1974, for his research into subcellular biology. He discovered lysosomes (the cell's digestive system) and peroxisomes (organelles where crucial metabolic processes take place), and shared his Nobel honors with Albert Claude and George E. Palade.

He was born to refugee parents in England, but his family returned to Antwerp while he was still a child. A naturalized citizen of Belgium, he was promoted to Viscount by the Belgian king in 1989.

Author of books:
-The Lysosome (1963)
-Lysosomes in Biology and Pathology (1975, with Roger Thornton Dean and J T Dingle)
-Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Pathological State (1979)
-A Guided Tour of the Living Cell (1984, with Neil O Hardy)
-Blueprint for a Cell: The Nature and Origin of Life (1991)
-Vital Dust: Life As a Cosmic Imperative (1996)
-Constraints on the Origin and Evolution of Life (1998)
-Life Evolving: Molecules, Mind, and Meaning (2002)
-Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life (2005)
-The Origin of Life (2006, video)

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