Marcel Florkin (

Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...

, 15 August 1900 – 3 May 1979) was a

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

biochemist. Florkin was graduated as a Doctor in Medicine and became a professor of

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

at the

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...

. In 1951, he was the initiator of the

Belgian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology The Belgian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) is a Belgian non-profit organization, concerned with biochemistry and molecular biology. The BMB was created, based on an initiative of Marcel Florkin, so a Belgian society could join ...

. Together with

Christian de Duve Christian René Marie Joseph, Viscount de Duve (2 October 1917 – 4 May 2013) was a Nobel Prize-winning Belgian cytologist and biochemist. He made serendipitous discoveries of two cell organelles, peroxisome and lysosome, for which he shared ...

, and others, he wrote a proposal for the statutes which was adopted in 1952, on the first general meeting. In 1944, he published a book (translated to English in 1949) concerning biochemical evolution, in which he explained the relevance of evolution for understanding differences in metabolism and chemical makeup between different types of organisms.Marcel Florkin, ''Biochemical Evolution'', NY: Academic Press, 1949 In later years he applied the principles of

biosemiotics Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, p ...

(indicator biology) on biochemistry. In 1946, Marcel Florkin was awarded the

Francqui Prize The Francqui Prize is a prestigious Belgian scholarly and scientific prize named after Émile Francqui. Normally annually since 1933, the Francqui Foundation awards it in recognition of the achievements of a scholar or scientist, who at the start ...

on Biological and Medical Sciences. He was a member of the ''Association for the intellectual and artistic progress of Wallonia''.

References

Bibliography

* Florkin, M, ''Concepts of molecular biosemiotics and of molecular evolution'', In: Comprehensive Biochemistry, 29A: 1–124, 1974. * Florkin, M, ''A History of Biochemistry'', American Elsevier Publishing Co., 1972, xviii + 343 pp.

Sources

* Fruton, JS, ''Marcel Florkin, 1900–1979, historian of biochemistry'', Hist Philos Life Sci. 1980;2(1):167-71

External links

Belgian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
(BMB)] Physicians from Liège University of Liège alumni 1900 births 1979 deaths University of Liège faculty Walloon movement activists Presidents of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology {{Belgium-scientist-stub