Mathias-Marie Duval

Who was Mathias-Marie Duval?

Mathias-Marie Duval was a French professor of anatomy and histology born in Grasse. He was the son of botanist Joseph Duval-Jouve.

He studied medicine in Paris, and later served as prosector in Strassburg. In 1873 he became agrégé, subsequently becoming director of the anthropological laboratory at the École des Hautes Etudes, anatomy professor at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, and in 1885 he replaced Charles-Philippe Robin as professor of histology at the medical faculty. In 1892 he became a member of the Académie de Médecine. He was also a member of the International Society for the History of Medicine.

Duval is remembered for research involving placental development in mice and rats, and was the first to identify trophoblast invasion in rodents. With Austrian-American gynecologist Walter Schiller, Schiller Duval bodies are named, which are structures found in endodermal sinus tumors.