Albert Claude

Albert Claude was a Belgian-American cell biologist and medical doctor who shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 with Christian de Duve and George Emil Palade. His elementary education started in a comprehensive primary school at Longlier, his birthplace. He served in the British Intelligence Service during the First World War, and got imprisoned in concentration camps twice. In recognition of his service, he was granted enrolment at the University of Liège in Belgium to study medicine without any formal education required for the course. He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1928. Devoted to medical research, he initially joined German institutes in Berlin. In 1929 he found an opportunity to join the Rockefeller Institute in New York. At Rockefeller University he made his most groundbreaking achievements in cell biology. In 1930 he developed the technique of cell fractionation, by which he discovered the agent of the Rous sarcoma, components of cell organelles such as mitochondrion, chloroplast, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, ribosome and lysosome. He was the first to employ the electron microscope in the field of biology. In 1945 he published the first detailed structure of cell. His collective works established the complex functional and structural properties of cells.

24 August 1899

Born on the same birth date (24 August 1899): Jorge Luis Borges

Born on the same birth day (24 August): Dick Lee • Dragutin Lerman • James Weddell • John Cipollina • John Green • Karl Hanke • Kim Sung-il (general) • Roger De Vlaeminck • William Wilberforce

Born in the same month (August 1899): Alfred Hitchcock • Béla Guttmann • C. S. Forester • Ezra Taft Benson • James Wong Howe • Janet Lewis • Jorge Luis Borges • Louis Chiron • P. L. Travers • Paul Herman Buck • Raymond Mays