Nicole Marthe Le Douarin

Nicole Marthe Le Douarin (born 20 August 1930) is a developmental biologist known for her studies of chimeras, which have led to critical insights regarding animal nervous and immune systems.

Le Douarin invented an embryo manipulation technology to produce chimeric embryos, from chicken and quails. Her research has shed light on the development of higher animal nervous and immune systems. She showed that precursor cells within the neural crest were multipotent. Her technique has also permitted her to shed light on the development of the blood and immune systems. Her work on antero-posterior patterning of the vertebrate digestive tract laid the grounds for future work, leading to a better understanding of antero-posterior patterning in the digestive tract.

Early years and education

Le Douarin was born on 20 August 1930 in Lorient, France. She was an only child, raised by both parents in the town of Lorient, where her mother worked as a schoolteacher and her father as a businessman. In 1944 she fled her hometown temporarilyand attended a boarding school in Nantes to escape the invading German forces, before moving back after the end of World War II to her high school in Lorient. She graduated in 1949. In high school and in her first year at university she was oriented towards literature but the influence of a talented science teacher in her last year at school turned her interests to natural sciences. She met her future husband while in high school and they both moved to Paris where they attended the same university and married in 1951. She received her B.S. in natural sciences from the Sorbonne in 1954. She did not immediately continue to graduate work, choosing instead to teach high school science and raise her two daughters. In 1958, she returned to the university to continue her education at the Institut d’Embryologie Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), working with renowned embryologist Etienne Wolf. This research led to her doctoral work and Ph.D. in 1964.

Career She was appointed to the faculty at the University of Nantes in 1966. The dean, however, almost disallowed her appointment because he disapproved of married women on the same faculty with their husbands. Le Douarin's mentor Wolf intervened, and the dean relented. However, she was not given laboratory space or a research budget, as her husband was, and she was given a heavy teaching load. Le Douarin continued her research on avian embryos, focusing on the interactions between the endoderm and mesoderm layers. Honorary member, American Association for Anatomy (1984) Kyoto Prize in Biotechnology and Medical Technology (1986) CNRS Gold Medal (1986) Member, Collège de France (Le Douarin was only the third woman admitted in its history) Fellow, The Royal Society (1989) Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1990) Honorary Fellow, The Royal College of Pathologists (1993) Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1993) Ross Harrison Prize from International Society of Developmental Biologists (1997) Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2004) (inaugural winner of the Prize) Edwin G. Conklin Medal from the Society for Developmental Biology (2005)