What happened to de Duve in 1949 could have happened to anyone of us: By accident, he left one of his animal cell homogenate preparations standing for a couple of days. What distinguishes de Duve from other people, and what makes, from my point of view, a great (young) scientist out of him, is that, instead of throwing the sample away on his return to the lab, de Duve had a closer look at it. This act of curiosity let de Duve to the discovery of the lysosomes. In fact, de Duve noticed that the level of a certain enzyme in the homogenate had risen dramatically, and that it had attacked substances present in the sample. Since the enzyme had not attacked any part of the cells before the latter were ground up, de Duve reasoned that it must have been kept segregated within the cells, probably inside some kind of organelle. He also knew that he had used a relatively gentle method of homogenisation, which could have allowed the unknown organelle to remain intact. Presumably, it released its contents later. It is now known that these organelles, the lysosomes (whose name refers to the fact that their enzymes can lyse, or digest, substances) exist in all eukaryotic cells.

Today, Dr. Christian de Duve is still fascinated by science, and he still dedicates his time to the writing of scientific books.

You can read more about Dr. Christian de Duve and about lysosomes at:

I would like to thank Dr. François Denef, colleague of Dr. Christian de Duve, and Histology teacher at the Medical Department of the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and at the Centre Universitaire de Luxembourg for teaching us about Dr. Christian de Duve and about the discovery of lysosomes.