Canadian biochemist, microbiologist and bacteriologist born in Montreal, Quebec, discoverer of bacteriophages, viruses that infect and destroy bacteria (1915) and that would become very important in the study of bacteriology. He studied at the Ecole Monge, future Lycée Condorcet (1887-1892), and then moved to the famous Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in Paris, where he finished his secondary studies (1890).
He enters the arms (1893), marries Marie Caire, with whom he had two children, gives up the army the following year and goes to live in Belgium (1994-1897). He returns to Canada where he works in a whiskey distillery (1897-1901). He participated in a geological mission to Labrador (1899), and with his brother Daniel, opened a chocolate shop (1901), but the deal didn't work out.
He moved to Guatemala (1901-1906) where he worked in a hospital while studying microbiology in a self-taught way. He moves to Mexico to work as a government bacteriologist (1907-1911), studying sisal fermentation. Research assistant at the laboratories of l'Institut Pasteur (1911-1921), where he worked with major researchers at the time and participated in the institute's missions to several countries, especially in the Americas and the Africa.
It was during this period that he discovered phages (1915) and published the results giving the names of bacteriophages (1917). He published Le bactériophage: Son rôle dans l'immunité (1921) and left the Institut Pasteur to work at the Institut de médecine tropicale in Leiden (1921-1924). Later he was head of the department of bacteriology at the Sanitary and Quarantine Council of Egypt (1925-1926) in Alexandria and collaborated with the Indian Medical Service for Cholera Prophylaxis (1927). He was a Visiting Professor of Bacteriology at the University of Yale, USA (1928-1934).
He returned to Paris and created a Laboratory for the production of bacteriophages for therapeutic treatment at Rue Olivier de Serres. He collaborated with l'Institut Pasteur et l'Institut du Radium (1937-1940) and edited the book Le Phénomène de la Guérison des maladies infectieuses (1938). During the war (1940-1945) he was forced to move to. Vichy because of his Canadian nationality and wrote Les pérégrinations d'un microbiologiste, edited posthumously. He received the Petit-d'Ormoy Prize de l'Académie des sciences (1948), died of pancreatic cancer in Paris (1949), and was buried at Saint-Mards-en-Othe, Aube.
Shortly before its discovery, British microbiologist Frederick W. Twort had already identified bacteriophages but was not given due importance. Soon after the French's discovery of bacteriophages, the Brazilian physician José da Costa Cruz began to study these microorganisms, introducing their use in Brazil as curative agents for dysentery bacillary. He developed a method of diagnosing yellow fever by measuring the complement, which has very low levels in infected individuals.
Source: http://www.dec.ufcg.edu.br/biografias/
Order F - Biography - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/biografia/felix-hubert-dherelle.htm
