CHRISTIAN de Duve

de DUVE--Christian. The Rockefeller University community deeply mourns the loss of our beloved friend and colleague Christian de Duve. One of the founders of modern cell biology, Dr. de Duve was Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus and a recipient of the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with his Rockefeller colleagues Albert Claude and George Palade. Research by Dr. de Duve centered on the identification and characterization of the organelles of living cells. He is best known for his discovery of lysosomes, subcellular particles that function in many ways as the digestive system of the cell. This basic discovery underlies the current understanding of several inherited disorders, including Tay-Sachs disease and Gaucher's disease. In his later years, Dr. de Duve's investigations focused on the origins of life on our planet. In 1974 he founded the International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology, a biomedical research institute modeled on The Rockefeller University, at the Catholic University of Louvain. The institute was renamed the Christian de Duve Institute on the occasion of his 80th birthday in 1997. Dr. de Duve was a brilliant scientist and a gifted teacher, mentor and author. He will be greatly missed. We extend our condolences to his children Thierry, Anne, Francoise and Alain and to his many colleagues on campus. Russell L. Carson, Chairman David Rockefeller, Honorary Chairman Marc Tessier-Lavigne, President