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Albert Claude, 1899-1983 with the Determined Intent to Fmd out Whatever There Was in It in Terms of Isolatable from Christian De Duve and George E

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Albert Claude, 1899-1983 with the Determined Intent to Fmd out Whatever There Was in It in Terms of Isolatable from Christian De Duve and George E ~·~-------------------------NME~W~S~AMNO~V~IE;vW~S:---------------------------- Obituary 'microsomes'. That was the beginning of a rather long side voyage that led him into the heart of the cell, not in search of a virus, but Albert Claude, 1899-1983 with the determined intent to fmd out whatever there was in it in terms of isolatable from Christian de Duve and George E. Palade particles, and to account for them in a careful quantitative manner. It was a ALBERT CLAUDE, who died in Brussels on Having failed in his first project, Claude glorious voyage during which he worked out Sunday 22 May, belonged to that small group went on to study the fate of the mouse sar­ his now classic cell-fractionation procedure. of truly exceptional individuals who, drawing coma S-37 when grafted in rats. The thesis Most of what we know today about the almost exclusively on their own resources and he wrote on his observations earned him a chemistry and activities of subcellular com­ following a vision far ahead of their time, government scholarship which he used to ponents is based on his quantitative ap­ opened single-handedly an entirely new field go to Berlin. There he frrst worked at the proach. Claude enjoyed isolating whatever of scientific investigation. Cancer Institute of the University, but was was isolatable: from microsomes to 'large He was born on 23 August 1899, in forced to leave prematurely after showing granules' (later recognized as mitochondria), Longlier, a hamlet of some 800 inhabitants that the bacterial theory of cancer genesis chromatin threads and zymogen granules. situated in the heart of the Belgian Ardennes. propounded by Blumenthal, the Institute's The isolated particles were characterized in His mother developed breast cancer when he director, rested on faulty experimental terms of their basic chemistry and - in the was 3 years old, and he was with her most of manipulations: the simultaneous inocula­ case of the large granules - in terms of en­ the time to witness the progress of the disease tion of cancer cells with the incriminated zymic activities in work done with G. until she died four years later. He attended bacteria. Claude then joined the Danish Hogeboom, W. Schneider and R. Hotchkiss. the village school for a few years, but then his scientist Albert Fischer, a pioneer of tissue­ It was a very impressive harvest for a relative­ family moved to the German-speaking village culture techniques. ly short period of about 8 years during which of Athus, where, as he has recounted, he By then, Claude knew exactly what he his attention was naturally and logically found himself learning to read German in wanted to do - isolate and characterize the diverted to a new approach, electron Gothic, without understanding it. Amazing­ agent of the Rous sarcoma - and where to microscopy. ly, his school education stopped there. do it-The Rockefeller Institute for Medical In 1945 he succeeded with Keith Porter and At the age of 12, he went to work in the Research. With his characteristic mixture of Edward Fullam in getting electron local steel factory, where he had risen to the naive directness and unselfconscious micrographs of cultured fibroblasts in which position of draughtsman by the time the First assurance, he wrote out a research project 'a lace-like reticulum' could be clearly seen World War broke out. During the war, and sent it to Simon Flexner, the director of below the limit of resolution of the light Claude served underground in occupied the Institute, asking to be admitted in one of microscope. In time, this reticulum became Belgium for the British Intelligence Service, the Institute's laboratories. It is to Flexner's the now well known endoplasmic reticulum and earned several military distinctions. credit that he reacted favourably to this un­ of all eukaryotic cells. Two years later, using The activities and disturbances did not conventional approach and Oaude sailed essentially the same approach and working prevent Albert Claude from pursuing an in­ from Antwerp on Friday the 13th of with K. R. Porter and E. Pickels, Claude tense process of self-education. His September 1929 to spend the next 20 years at fmally found the chicken tumour I agent in childhood dream had been to study medicine, the Rockefeller Institute, first bringing to infected cultured cells. but his lack of a high-school diploma barred fruition his project on the Rous sarcoma One year later, he gave a travelogue of that his access to medical school. Reluctantly, he virus, and moving on from there to prepare historic voyage at the Harvey Society. His prepared, and passed successfully in 1921, the the fulfillment of his main dream: to enter the lecture retraces in memorable fashion the entrance examination to the School of Min­ cell, 'the mansion of our birth'. construction of those two pillars of modern ing Engineering, for which a high-school In 1949, he accepted a pressing offer from cell biology: cell fractionation and electron diploma was not required. Then something the Free University of Brussels to assume the microscopy. It heralds the beginning of of a miracle happened. He was able to take directorship of the Jules Bordet Institute. three decades of unprecedently rapid de­ advantage of a government disposition - Claude brought to his new duties the same velopments worked out in many labor­ obviously not intended for him - allowing thoroughness and perfectionist attention to atories throughout the world. war veterans to enter a university without a detail that he had devoted to his scientific Albert Claude approached science and the diploma or examination. He immediately work. But it took him several years before he other facets of human culture - he was a enrolled in the Medical School of the Univer­ was able to return to the cell. He retired from friend of the painter Diego Rivera and of the sity of Liege - not without a good measure the Bordet Institute in 1971, and moved to a musician Varese- with the candid and un­ of apprehension as he believed that the new laboratory offered to him by the prejudiced open-mindedness of the courses were given in Latin. He graduated as Catholic University of Louvain. In 1974, he unschooled. In some ways, he could serve as a an MD in 1928, one year ahead of the regular was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology good example for the proponents of nature curriculum. or Medicine. We were honoured to share it versus nurture. Yet, he was also a child of his As a student, Claude was already with him. environment, reflecting in his attitude the fascinated by cells: Claude's scientific career developed simple commonsense and fierce in­ "I remember vividly my student days, spending logically from a deep interest in cancer - the dividualism of the Ardennais peasants, deriv­ hours at the light microscope, turning endlessly the disease that killed his mother. His work at the ing his love of life and beauty from the rugged micrometric screw and gazing at the blurred boun­ Rockefeller Institute showed that the countryside in which he spent a lonely and dary which concealed from us the mysterious 'chicken tumour I agent' (Rous sarcoma dreamy childhood, marked by the "blues of ground substance where, one felt, the secret virus) was a complex of ribonucleic acid, pro­ the blueberries and of slate, the blue-green of mechanisms of ceU life might be found. Until .. I tein and phospholipid that lost its activity the fir-trees, new comers among the oaks, the realized that I should stop that futile game, and should try something else. In the meantime, I had upon UV irradiation, the inactivation spec­ blue-grey of the covered skies, but also in full faUen in love with the shape and the color of the trum coinciding with the absorption spec­ summer, by the clear waters and the black eosinophilic granules of leucocytes, and attempted trum of nucleic acids. nights on the milky way" (quoted from a let­ to isolate them. I failed - and coosoled myself But then in the late 1930s, he discovered terofClaudetoMarcelFlorkin). D later on in thinking that it was technically that similar complexes (without the biological premature, especially for a premedical student, and activity of the agent) were present in large that the eosinophilic granules were not pink, amounts in the cells of chick embryos he used Christian de Duve is at the Catholic University of anyway." Louvain and at The Rockefeller University and as controls. These normal complexes became George E. Palade is at the Yale University School (Out of Claude's Nobel lecture.) in time 'small granules' and finally of Medicine. 0028-0836/ 83/ 330588.01$01.00 CJ 1983 Macmillan Journals ltd .
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