Edouard Van Beneden


Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden, 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.
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..

Publications

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