Edouard Van Beneden

Edouard Van Beneden (5 March, 1846, Leuven– 28 April, 1910, Liège), 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 has been at the basis of the genetic studies of the 20th century, thanks to his works on a parasite of the horse, that made him discover how chromosomes combined during reproduction (meiosis).

Together with Walther Flemming, Eduard Strasburger, and others, he elucidated the essential facts of cell division and stressed the importance of the qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells.