Paul Adriaan Jan, Baron Janssen (12 September 1926 – 11 November 2003) was a Belgian physician. He was the founder of Janssen Pharmaceutica, a pharmaceutical company with over 20,000 employees which is now a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
Etienne Vermeersch (2 May 1934, Sint-Michiels, Bruges – 18 January 2019, Ghent) was a Belgian moral philosopher, skeptic, opinion maker and debater. He is one of the founding fathers of the abortion, euthanasia law, and the Law on Patients' Rights in Belgium. Vermeersch became an atheist after five years with the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Later he became a philosophical materialist. In January 2008, Vermeersch was chosen by hundred prominent Flemings as the most influential intellectual of Flanders. He died in a hospital in Ghent on 18 January 2019 by euthanasia after a long illness.
Willy Clarisse Elvire Hector, Viscount De Clercq (8 July 1927 – 28 October 2011) was a Belgian liberal politician.
De Clercq was born in Ghent, son of Frans de Clercq. After his law and notariat studies at the University of Ghent and a scholarship at Syracuse University (Syracuse, United States), De Clerq became a lawyer at the Court of appeal in Ghent and a professor at Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Although he could have had a successful career in law, he got into politics. He was member of the Liberal youth and was elected municipal councillor and member of parliament.
De Clercq served in various coalition governments. He was secretary of state for the budget (1960–1961), deputy prime minister and minister of the budget from 1966 to 1968, deputy prime minister and Minister of Finance in 1973–1974, Minister of Finance in 1974–1977, and deputy prime minister in 1980.
De Clercq served as president of various international monetary instances and as president of the then liberal party PVV. He served for a term as a member of the European Commission (1985–1989). Moreover, he became Minister of State in 1985. From 1989 to 2004, he was a member of the European Parliament.
In 2003, he created together with other prominent European personalities the Medbridge Strategy Center, whose goal is to promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Europe and the Middle-East.He died on 28 October 2011.
Johan Daisne was the pseudonym of Flemish author Herman Thiery (2 September 1912 – 9 August 1978). Born in Ghent, Belgium, he attended the Koninklijk Atheneum before studying Economics and Slavic languages at Ghent University, receiving his doctorate in 1936. In 1945 he was appointed chief librarian of the city of Ghent.
George Alfred Leon Sarton (; 31 August 1884 – 22 March 1956) was a Belgian-American chemist and historian. He is considered the founder of the discipline of the history of science as an independent field of study. His most influential works were the Introduction to the History of Science, which consists of three volumes and 4,296 pages and the journal Isis. Sarton ultimately aimed to achieve an integrated philosophy of science that provided a connection between the sciences and the humanities, which he referred to as "the new humanism".
Franz-Valéry-Marie Cumont (3 January 1868 in Aalst, Belgium – 20 August 1947 in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre near Brussels) was a Belgian archaeologist and historian, a philologist and student of epigraphy, who brought these often isolated specialties to bear on the syncretic mystery religions of Late Antiquity, notably Mithraism.
Dirk Dries David Damiaan, Viscount Frimout (born 21 March 1941 in Poperinge, Belgium) is an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. He flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-45 as a payload specialist, making him the first Belgian in space.