Citizenship Belgian Role Biologist Institutions University of Liege | Fields Embryology Name Edouard Beneden Institution University of Liege | |
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Died April 28, 1910, Liege, Belgium | ||
Parents Pierre-Joseph van Beneden | ||
Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden (Leuven, 5 March 1846 – Liège, 28 April 1910), son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden, was a Belgian embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist. He was professor of zoology at the University of Liège. He contributed to cytogenetics by his works on the roundworm Ascaris. In this work he discovered how chromosomes organized meiosis (the production of gametes).
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Van Beneden elucidated, together with Walther Flemming and Eduard Strasburger, the essential facts of mitosis, where, in contrast to meiosis, there is a qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells. (See karyotype).
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Father
Van Beneden's father, Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (1809–1894) was also a well-known biologist. He introduced two important terms into evolutionary biology and ecology: mutualism and commensalism.