Edouard Van Beneden

Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden (5 March 1846 in Leuven – 28 April 1910 in Liège) 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).

He is son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden, a zoologist and paleontologist.

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).

Publications Recherches sur la composition et la signification de l'œuf 1868 Full text available from Archive.org PDF La maturation de l'oeuf, la fecondation, et les premieres phases du développement embryonnaire des mammifères, d'aprés des recherches faites chez le lapin : communication préliminaire in Bulletins de l'Académie royale de Belgique. 2me.série; 40(12) 1875

Family Van Beneden's father, Pierre-Joseph van Beneden (18091894) was also a well-known biologist. He introduced two important terms into evolutionary biology and ecology: mutualism and commensalism.