Jules-Émile Verschaffelt (27 January 1870 in Ghent – 22 December 1955) was a Belgian physicist. He worked at Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory in Leiden from 1894 to 1906 and once again from 1914 to 1923. From 1906 to 1914 he worked at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and from 1923 to 1940 at the Ghent University.
He was one of the participants of the fifth Solvay Conference on Physics that took place at the International Solvay Institute for Physics in Belgium.
Frédéric Jean Edmond Swarts (2 September 1866 – 6 September 1940) was a Belgian chemist who prepared the first chlorofluorocarbon, CF2Cl2 (Freon-12) as well as several other related compounds. He was a professor in the civil engineering at the University of Ghent. In addition to his work on organofluorine chemistry, he authored the textbook "Cours de Chimie Organique." He was a son of Theodore Swarts (chemist, *1839 Antwerpen; †1911 Kortenberg, Belgium) and a colleague of Leo Baekeland.
Alphonse Francois Renard (27 September 1842 – 9 July 1903), Belgian geologist and petrographer, was born at Ronse, in East Flanders, on 27 September 1842. He was educated for the church of Rome, and from 1866 to 1869 he was superintendent at the college de la Paix, Namur.In 1870 he entered the Jesuit Training College at the old abbey of Maria Laach in the Eifel, and there, while engaged in studying philosophy and science, he became interested in the geology of the district, and especially in the volcanic rocks. Thenceforth he worked at chemistry and mineralogy, and qualified himself for those petrographical researches for which he was distinguished.In 1874 he became professor of chemistry and geology in the college of the Belgian Jesuits at Leuven, a few years later he was appointed one of the curators of the Royal Natural History Museum at Brussels, and in 1882 he relinquished his post at Louvain. In 1888 he was chosen professor of geology at the University of Ghent, and retained the post until the close of his life. Meanwhile, he had been ordained priest in 1877, and had intended to enter the Society of Jesus. He was known as the Abbé Renard; but, as remarked by Sir A. Geikie, as years passed, the longing for mental freedom grew ever stronger, until at last it overmastered all the traditions and associations of a lifetime, and he finally separated himself from the church of Rome.His first work, written in conjunction with Charles-Louis-Joseph-Xavier de la Vallée-Poussin (1827–1904), was the Mémoire sur les caractères minéralogiques et stratigraphiques des roches dues plutoniennes de la Belgique et de l'Ardenne française (1876). In later essays and papers he dealt with the structure and mineral composition of many igneous and sedimentary rocks, and with the phenomena of metamorphism in Belgium and other countries. In acknowledgment of his work, the Bigsby Medal was awarded to him in 1885 by the Geological Society of London. Still more important were his later researches connected with the Challenger Expedition. The various rock specimens and oceanic deposits were submitted to him for examination in association with Sir John Murray, and their detailed observations were embodied in the Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger Deep Sea Deposits (1891). The more striking additions to our knowledge included the detection and description of cosmic dust, which as fine rain slowly accumulates on the ocean floor; the development of zeolitic crystals on the sea-bottom at temperatures of 32 °F (0 °C) and under; and the distribution and mode of occurrence of manganese nodules and of phosphatic and glauconite deposits on the bed of the ocean. Renard died at Brussels on 9 July 1903.Rue Alphonse Renard, in western Ixelles, is named in his honor. In addition, the mineral renardite was named in his honor in 1928.
François Laurent (8 July 1810 – 11 February 1887) was a Belgian historian and jurisconsult.
Charles François Antoine Morren (3 March 1807 in Ghent – 17 December 1858 in Liège), was a Belgian botanist and horticulturist, and Director of the Jardin botanique de l’Université de Liège.Morren taught physics at Ghent University between 1831 and 1835. At the same time he studied medicine and graduated in 1835. He became Professor extraordinarius of botany at the University of Liège from 1835 to 1837, and full professor from 1837 to 1854.
Pollination of Vanilla orchids is required to make the plants produce the pods from which vanilla extract is obtained. In 1837, Morren was among the first to publish a method for artificial pollination of Vanilla, but his method proved financially unworkable and was not deployed commercially. In 1841, Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave who lived on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, discovered that the plant could be hand-pollinated. Hand-pollination allowed global cultivation of the plant. Noted French botanist and plant collector Jean Michel Claude Richard falsely claimed to have discovered the technique three or four years earlier, but by the end of the 20th century, Albius was considered the true discoverer.
He was the father of Charles Jacques Édouard Morren. Morren and his son produced the journal La Belgique Horticole (35 volumes, 1851–1885).
Morren also coined the term phenology, which refers to the scientific discipline that studies the seasonal cycles of animals and plants. Morren first used the term phenology in 1849 during a public lecture at the Academy of Brussels. The first use of the term phenology in a scientific paper dates back to 1853 when Morren published “Souvenirs phénologiques de l’hiver 1852-1853” (“Phenological memories of the winter 1852-1853”). This paper describes an exceptionally warm winter when plants exhibited unusually phenological patterns.
This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation C.Morren when citing a botanical name.
Jean Kickx (17 January 1803, Brussels – 1864) was a Belgian botanist. His father, also known as Jean Kickx (1775–1831) was a botanist and mineralogist; his son Jean Jacques Kickx (1842–1887) was a professor of botany at the University of Ghent.
In 1830 he obtained his PhD at Leuven, later serving as a professor of botany in Brussels (1831–1835) and at the University of Ghent (1835–1864). He was a co-founder of the Société royale de botanique de Belgique.The mycological genus Kickxella (order Kickxellales) was named in his honor by Eugène Coumans.
François Louis Ganshof (14 March 1895, Bruges – 26 July 1980, Brussels) was a Belgian medievalist. After studies at the Athénée Royal, he attended the University of Ghent, where he came under the influence of Henri Pirenne. After studies with Ferdinand Lot, he practiced law for a period, before returning to the University of Ghent. Here he succeeded Pirenne in 1930 as professor of medieval history, after Pirenne left the university as a result of the enforcement of Dutch as language of instruction. He remained there until his retirement in 1961.
Ganshof's work was primarily on Flanders in the Carolingian period. His best known book is Qu'est-ce que la féodalité? (1944). Here he defines feudalism narrowly, in simple legal and military terms. Feudalism, in Ganshof's view, existed only within the nobility. This contrasts with Marc Bloch, where feudalism encompasses society as a whole, and Susan Reynolds, who questions the concept of feudalism in itself.
Though Ganshof's definition is not always accepted today, this book was not his only work. He contributed greatly to his field, mostly through articles. Among the few books he published were Les Destinées de l'Empire en occident de 395 à 888 (1928) and Flandre sous les premiers comtes (1943). In 1946 he received the Francqui Prize for Human Sciences.
Ganshof was renowned as the greatest European expert on the Frankish kingdoms, particularly under the Carolingian dynasty; he never wrote the definitive biography of Charlemagne that everyone expected of him, but his contributions to Frankish history continue to be fundamental. The best English-language introduction to this (very major) aspect of his work is in F.L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History, tr. Janet Sondheimer (London: Longman, 1971). This collection of major articles ends with an exhaustive bibliography of Ganshof's writings on Merovingian and Carolingian history down to 1970.
Gerard Alfons August, Baron Mortier (25 November 1943 – 8 March 2014) was a Belgian opera director and administrator of Flemish origin.
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.
Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (French pronunciation: [ʒozɛf ɑ̃twan fɛʁdinɑ̃ plato]; 14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this, he used counterrotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistiscope.