Bordet, Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent (1870-1961)

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Microbiologist and immunologist, Nobel laureate born in Soignies on 13 June 1870 and died in Ixelles (Brussels) on 6 April 1961.

Biography

Jules Bordet was born in Soignies (Hainaut) on 13 June 1870. He attended primary school in Schaerbeek, where his father also taught. He completed his secondary education at the Royal Athaeneum of Brussels. At the age of 16, he enrolled at ULB to study medicine. He finished this course after six years instead of the normal seven. In 1892, he obtained his doctorate in medicine and in the same year published Adaptation des virus aux organismes vaccinés. This publication won him a travel grant. Before leaving, he worked for one more year in Middelkerke as an assistant physician at the Martieme Hospital Roger de Grimberghe. In 1894, thanks to the travel grant, he stayed at Elie Metchnikoff's laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He remained there until 1901. During this period, he married Marthe Levoz and had three children with her. His stay was interrupted a first time in 1896 to obtain a special doctorate with a presentation on his achievements at the Pasteur Institute (Paris). In 1897, he was entrusted by the Pasteur Institute with a mission to the Transvaal to study rinderpest. He succeeded in isolating the causative agent of rinderpest. In 1900, the Provincial Council of Brabant decided to establish the Antirabic and Bacteriological Institute. Jules Bordet was appointed director of this Institute on his return to Brussels. Operations began on 1 July 1901. The institute was temporarily housed in the premises of the Solvay Institute in the Leopold Park. In 1903, the institute was renamed to the Pasteur Institute of Brabant. Pasteur's widow had consented to this.

In 1907, Bordet became professor of microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine at ULB, and occupied the chair of bacteriology at the Faculty of Medicine. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1919. In 1920, he was part of the delegation that travelled to the United States of America to request funds from the Rockefeller Foundation to establish new institutes at the Faculty of Medicine. In 1933, he was appointed president of the Scientific Council of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. In 1935 he left the Chair of Biology at ULB and in 1940 he resigned as director of the Pasteur Institute of Brabant. He was admitted to emeritus status the same year. His functions were taken over by his son Paul.

Bordet became a corresponding member of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique on 15 December 1913 , a member on 14 June 1919 and president of the Class of Sciences in 1934. He was an effective member and president of the Académie royale de médecine de Belgique. He was also president of the High Council of Hygiene in Belgium, former president of the High Council of Hygiene in the Belgian colony and former president of the Conseil d'Administration de l'Oeuvre Nationale Belge de défense contre la Tuberculose. He was a foreign member of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was an associate member of the Institut de France, of the Académie nationale des Sciences des Etats-Unis, of the Académie de Médecine de Paris and of the Académie Médecine de Roumanie. He was an honorary member of the Medical Academy of Spain and a member of the Academy of Sweden, Denmark, Bologna, Ireland, Halle (Germany) and Poland. He was a member of the Medical Academies of Rome, Barcelona, New York, Mexico and of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Cambridge, Paris, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Edinburgh, Nancy, Québec, Montpellier, Cairo and Athens. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Bordet received a host of other awards. He won the Five-Yearly Prize of the Belgian Government for the Medical Sciences in 1906, the Prize of the International Congress of Hygiene in Budapest in 1909, the Hansen Prize in 1914, the Golden Pasteur Medal in 1920, the Cameron Prize (1921), the Friends of Hainaut Prize (1935), the Addingham Gold Medal in 1950 and the Prize of the Governor E. Cornez Fund. He received the Grand Ribbon in the Order of Leopold and the Grand Cross in the Legion of Honour.

The Jules Bordet Prize, the Jules Bordet Institute and the Athenée Jules Bordet (the athenaeum where he studied himself) were named after him. Bordet was honoured by his hometown of Soignies with a bust in a square named after him.

Work

He made fundamental contributions to the fields of physiology and bacteriology.
He laid the foundation for a new science: humoral immunology. In 1895, he revealed the role and mechanisms of action of specific humoral components (antibodies) in the acquisition of immunity against infectious agents. He also established that the effect of immunoglobulin is significantly enhanced in vivo by the body's own plasma elements, which he called "alexin" and are known today as complement. This mechanism became the basis for methods to test complement binding and enabled the development of serological tests for syphilis, such as the "Wasserman test" developed by August von Wassermann in 1906.
In addition, at the Institut Pasteur of Brabant, Bordet described the phagocytosis of bacteria by white blood cells. In 1898, he described the haemolysis that occurs when xenogeneous blood plasma is added to red blood cells.
He and Octave Gengou (1875-1957) discovered in 1906 the bacterium responsible for whooping cough (this bacterium has been named bacillus of Bordet-Gengou or still Bordetella pertussis). He also discovered those of avian diphtheria and of the mycoplasma of bovine pleuropneumonia. In 1920 Bordet published his Traité de l'immunité dans les maladies infectieuses, a key publication. In 1939 he wrote a second edition of the Traité de l'immunité dans les maladies infectieuses.
He described several immunological mechanisms hitherto unknown, took an interest in blood coagulation and the study of bacteriophages.

Publication of course material

In 1927 the courses Bordet taught at the ULB were published under the title Bactériologie, Parasitologie.

Science popularisation

He wrote a publication clearly explaining the complexities of immunology. This publication: Infection et immunité was published in Paris in 1947 in the Bibliothèque de Philosophie scientifique-series. He also wrote on astronomy, see his Elements d'Astronomie.

Philosophical reflections

In 1945 he published Brèves considérations sur le mode de gouvernement, la liberté et l'éducation morale.

Political activism

Throughout his life Jules Bordet advocated for the French language in Flanders and Brussels. In the early 1920's he was actively argued within the Académie royale de médecine de Belgique against the Dutchification of the University of Ghent. In that context, he engaged in the Ligue Nationale pour la Défense de l'Université de Gand et la Liberté des Langues, the future Ligue Nationale pour l'Unité belge. He became its president in 1926. For a short time, Bordet was a liberal provincial senator for Hainaut (January to November 1921) and a member of the Assemblée wallonne - a Walloon alliance - from 1921 to 1940 for the district of Soignies.

In 1938, Bordet came to head the French Cultural Council, created as part of the cultural decentralisation policy. During the Occupation, Bordet edited his Brèves considérations sur le mode de gouvernement, la liberté et l'éducation morale. The work work published in 1945. It showed Bordet as a fierce adept of the utmost linguistic freedom, and an opponent of the Flemish Movement. In 1952, Bordet took part in the congress of the 'Bloc de la Liberté', which opposed language measures in favour of Dutch in the Brussels agglomeration.

Publications

• A short list with publications can be found in: Bordet, Paul, "Jules Bordet", In: Annuaire ARB, jaargang 1982, p. 25.
  

Bibliography

• BEUMER, Jacques, "Bordet (Jules)", in Biographie Nationale, t. 38, 1973, col. 26-36.
• BORDET, Paul, "Jules Bordet", in Annuaire de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1982, p. 3-24.
• BORDET, Paul, "Jules Bordet", in Florilège des sciences en Belgique pendant le 19^e et le début du 20^e, Bruxelles : Académie royale de Belgique Classe des sciences, 1968, p. 1035-1067.
• "Brèves informations biographiques", Bulletins de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1961, p. 676.
• DALCQ, Albert M., JENNER, Raymond, "Hommage à l’occasion du centième anniversaire de sa naissance", Bulletins de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1970, pp. 1433 et 1437.
• GÉRARD, Pol, "Allocution à l’occasion de la remise du buste de J. Bordet à l’Académie", in Bulletins de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1955, p. 415.
• GÉRARD, Pol, "Bordet, (Jules)", in Biographie Belge d'Outre-Mer, t. 6, 1968, col. 86-89.
• THIEFFRY, Denis, "La biologie fondamentale: de l’organisme à la cellule, de la molécule à l’écosystème", in Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia, 2001, vol. 2, p. 203.
• DELFORGE, Paul, « Bordet Jules” in Encyclopédie du Mouvement wallon, t. I, Charleroi, Institut Jules Destrée, 2000, p. 170-171.
• ROYEN, Virgile, Les réactions des universitaires liégeois face à la flamandisation de l’Université de Gand, inédit, Mémoire de maîtrise en histoire, Université de Liège, année académique 2016-2017.