Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet, 1870-1961

Abstract

Jules Bordet was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1916, at the early age, for a biologist, of nearly 46. His forbears came originally from Rolamport, near Langres (Haute Marne, France), whence one of his ancestors moved to Liège at the end of the eighteenth century. Bordet’s father (Charles) was born in Liège in 1834, but in later life he was appointed schoolmaster at Soignies, a small town about 25 miles from Brussels, and settled down there and married Célestine Vandenabeele; Jules, his second son, was born there on 13 June 1870. When his father was appointed master at the Ecole Moyenne at Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, in 1874, the whole family moved to the capital.