Christian de Duve
Christian de Duve (born October 2, 1917) is a biochemist. de Duve was born in Thames-Ditton, Britain, as a son of Belgian emigrants. They returned to Belgium in 1920. de Duve studied at the Catholic University of Louvain, where he became professor in 1947. He specialized in subcellular biochemistry and cell biology and discovered the peroxisomes, a cell organelle.Amongst other subjects, de Duve studied the distribution of enzymes in rat liver cells using rate-zonal centrifugation. de Duve's work on cell fractionation provided an insight into the function of cell structures.
de Duve was awarded the shared Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1974, together with Albert Claude and George E. Palade, for describing the structure and function of organelles in biological cellss. His later years have been mostly devoted to origin of life studies, which he admits is still a speculative field (see thioester).