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Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve (1917-2013) was best known for his work on understanding and categorising subcellular organelles. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974 for his joint discovery of lysosomes, the subcellular organelles that digest macromolecules and deal with ingested bacteria. [Listener: Peter Newmark; date recorded: 2005]

TRANSCRIPT: I had spent, I would say, 12 or 13 years preparing to actually do what I thought was going to be the major piece of research, the major discovery I was going to make: elucidate the mechanism of action of insulin. I started a very small group at the university. I was given a lab; I was given a budget that was the equivalent, at that time, of something like $200 a year, which wasn't much. So I had to go back again to St. Louis. When I was there, first of all, I was never able to have, with the Coris, the kind of conversation I wanted to have, so I never converted them to the right theory, although they eventually... of course, we all agreed, and they became great friends; there was no problem about that. But they were supported in their work by Lilly... Eli Lilly and Company, which were established not too far in Indianapolis, in Indiana, and had a big program of... of research support. They supported research on insulin in a number of labs and so, while I was in St. Louis, I... I went to visit the Lilly company, and I was a little embarrassed because, in fact, what I had demonstrated was that their insulin was no good. But, in fact, they took it very well. In fact, they were the first to actually crystallise glucagon and to establish its... its amino acid sequence, so... And what was more important, they actually gave me a grant. Which, for that time and for Belgium, was a huge amount of money: $5,000 a year.

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