Christian de Duve is a Belgian cytologist and biochemist, born in 1917, who discovered lysosomes (the digestive organelles of the cell) and peroxisomes (organelles that are the site of metabolic processes involving hydrogen peroxide).
For this work he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Albert Claude and George Palade in 1974.
In the course of research on the action of insulin upon liver tissue in 1949, de Duve observed a delay in the action of enzymes that break down material, suggesting the enzymes were enclosed with a membranous envelope.
He calculated the probable size of this organelle, christened it the lysosome and later identified it in electron microscope pictures. He refined the cell fractionation techniques of Claude to isolate the lysosomes and perixosomes for study.
In 1947, de Duve joined the faculty of Leuven University where he had received his Masters Degree in chemistry in 1946. From 1962, he simultaneously headed research laboratories at the Universities of Leuven, Belgium and Rockefeller, New York City.