Edouard 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).
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).

• Édouard van Beneden Recherches sur la composition et la signification de l'œuf 1868 Full text available from Archive.org PDF

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.