In memoriam : Jean de Grouchy, 1926–2003

Catherine Turleau *

Cytogénétique—Pasteur I, Hôpital Necker–Enfants-Malades, 75743 Paris cedex 15, France

Received and accepted 5 July 2004

Available online 25 August 2004

Jean de Grouchy passed away last year on July 22, 2003 at the age of 77. With his friendJérôme Lejeune, he was a pioneer in Human Cytogenetics. He has seen and contributed toperhaps the most fascinating years in the history of the field. Jean de Grouchy belongs to thefirst generation of human and mammalian cytogeneticists. He established friendly relation-ships with his peers, among them Patricia Jacobs, James German, John Hamerton, JohnEvans, Charles Ford, Jan Lindsten, Marco Fraccaro and indeed Jérôme Lejeune, most ofthem being now retired or sadly dead. For more than 20 years, until his retirement in 1991,he was the editor-in-chief of Annales de Génétique, that was initially published in French,and made this journal a major one in the field of cytogenetics.

Jean de Grouchy was born in Holland in 1926 and received his medical degree in 1953in Paris. Since 1954, he was a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique(CNRS) and, in 1965, became “Directeur de Recherche” in this Institution. In 1956 and1957, he was a Rockefeller research fellow in Jim Neel’s Department of Human Cytoge-netics, Ann Harbour, MI. When he came back in 1958, he published his first book“L’Hérédité Moléculaire. Conditions Normales et Pathologiques”. The discovery oftrisomy 21 by J. Lejeune, in association with Gauthier and Turpin, made him decide todevelop his own laboratory devoted to chromosome studies at the Clinique de GénétiqueMédicale, Necker-Enfants Malades, Paris. He published his first results in the followingyears. They concerned, among others, the phenotypic abnormalities associated with struc-tural imbalances of chromosome 18, to which his name is still associated [2].

I worked in his laboratory from 1968 and shared most of the original contributions hemade throughout his fruitful career in human and primate cytogenetics.

Many of these where published in the Annales de Génétique. They include the firstdescriptions of clonal evolution in human leukaemia [1], the early attempts to reconstitutethe chromosomal phylogeny of human and great apes (further developed and extended to

* Corresponding author.E-mail address: catherine.turleau@nck.ap-hop-paris.fr (C. Turleau).

Annales de Génétique 47 (2004) 437–439

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other species by Bernard Dutrillaux) [3,4], human and comparative gene mapping [8]. Healso had a particular interest in the early stages of fertilization. The introduction ofchromosome banding techniques gave us the opportunity to describe the phenotypesassociated with many segmental chromosome imbalances. These observations and litera-ture reports allowed us to publish the Atlas des Maladies Chromosomiques, which remainsa useful reference for clinical cytogeneticists [7].

Besides more than 300 articles published in scientific journals, Jean de Grouchy alsowrote several books intended for a wider public, that witness his gift for writing [5,6,9].

At this time where major changes are expected with regard to molecular cytogenetics,warm thoughts are going out to Jean de Grouchy, a pioneer of cytogenetics, who hasallowed this journal to live. Fig. 1

References

[1] J. de Grouchy, C. De Nava, J.M. Cantu, G. Bilski-Pasquier, J. Bousser, Models for clonal evolutions. Astudy of chronic myelogenous leukaemia, Am. J. Hum. Genet. 18 (1966) 485–503.

[2] J. de Grouchy, The 18p-, 18q- and 18r syndromes. Birth Defects Orig. Art. Ser, vol V. (1969) 74–87.[3] C. Turleau, J. de Grouchy, M. Klein, Phylogénie chromosomique de l’homme et des primates hominiens

(pan troglodytes, gorilla gorilla et pongo pygmaeus). Essai de Reconstitution du Caryotype de l’ancêtreCommun, Ann. Génét. 15 (1972) 225–240.

[4] J. de Grouchy, C. Turleau, M. Roubin, F. Chavin-Colin, Chromosomal Evolution of Man and the Primates(Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, Pongo pygmaeus), Nobel Symposium 23 Stockholm September 25–27,1972, pp. 124–131.

[5] J. de Grouchy, De la Naissance des Espèces aux Aberrations de la Vie. Robert Laffont, Paris, 1978.[6] J. de Grouchy, Jumeaux, Mosaïques, Chimères et Autres Aléas de la Fécondation Humaine. Medsi Editor,

Paris, 1980.

Fig. 1.

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[7] J. de Grouchy, C. Turleau, Atlas des Maladies Chromosomiques. Expansion Scientifique Française, Paris,1982.

[8] C. Turleau, N. Creau-Goldberg, C. Cochet, J. de Grouchy, Gene mapping of the gibbon. Its position inprimate evolution, Hum. Genet. 64 (1983) 5–72.

[9] J. de Grouchy, Où cours-tu primate ? Expansion Scientifique Française, Paris, 1992.

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