Robert Courrier (1895-1986)
When Robert Courrier entered the Collège de France in 1938, at the age of 42 from the Faculty of Medicine in Algiers, he was known for research that had earned him an international reputation. The Collège de France had already shown its esteem for him in 1933, when it awarded him the Saintour Award. Later, in 1946, the confidence of his colleagues won him the vice-presidency of the Assembly of Professors; he held this position without interruption until May 1965, shortly before his retirement, and a special vote of the Assembly conferred on him the unusual title of "honorary vice-president of the Assembly of Professors".
To appreciate the importance of Robert Courrier's scientific work, with his first publications dating back to 1920, 66 years ago, it is worth recalling the state of knowledge in biology just after the First World War. As far as endocrinology was concerned, although the Nancy and Montpellier schools had paved the way, the major discoveries were not to be made until the following quarter century. Robert Courrier was one of those discoverers.
Born into a family of schoolteachers on October 6, 1895, in Saxon-Sion, Lorraine, Robert Courrier attended secondary school in Pont-à-Mousson. In 1913, he entered the Nancy Faculty of Science to prepare for the P.C.N. In November 1914, he enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine. Mobilized in December, in a battalion of chasseurs à pied, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1916, during the battle of Verdun, then wounded on the Somme. He was then sent to the Salonika front as an auxiliary doctor until May 1919. On his return, his father having been appointed to Strasbourg, he enrolled at the Strasbourg medical school. It was here that he became a pupil of Pol Bouin, first as a student completing his studies, then rapidly as a researcher in the laboratory. Intellectual curiosity and a zeal for hard work meant that the incubation period was not long. As early as 1920, Robert Courrier published two highly original notes on hibernating bats, first the males, then the females. At the same time, in 1921, he tried to verify the action of the thyroid on the thymus described by Dustin in Belgium.
Thus, in the first two years in the laboratory, the three major directions of Robert Courrier's research were outlined: testicular endocrinology, ovarian endocrinology and thyroid endocrinology.
Firstly, the physiology of reproduction and endocrinology of the male, the subject of his Science thesis defended in 1927. He showed that in certain mammals with seasonal reproductive activity, such as the pipistrelles collected from Strasbourg cathedral, there is a coincidence between the blossoming of male sexual characteristics and the secretory activity of the interstitial gland, while the reproductive line is inactive. Such observations supported what was then known as Bouin and Ancel's interstitial theory. Since 1903, these two forerunners of sexual endocrinology had been defending the now well-proven idea that the male hormone is secreted by the interstitial cells of the testicle. Later, in Algiers, where he had been appointed in 1926, Courrier obtained experimental stimulation of the only interstitial gland in the testicle of the prepubescent Magot d'Algérie, resulting in the development of sexual characteristics. A few years before his retirement from the Collège de France, he was still fascinated by the study of a tumor, transmissible by grafting, of interstitial cells. These experiments provided further confirmation of the "interstitial theory" of his teacher Pol Bouin, for whom he always had a real veneration.
His research into ovarian physiology is probably one of the most highly regarded. They are also the ones that Justin Jolly presented most warmly in his report in support of the Chair of Experimental Morphology and Endocrinology at the Collège de France, and of its holder.
In 1923, Robert Courrier studied the vaginal manifestations of rutting in female guinea pigs. In February 1924, he reported that injection of sow follicular fluid into castrated female guinea pigs produced an experimental rut. This was the discovery of the hormone he called folliculin.
This publication had been preceded by 3 months by that of Edgar Allen and Doisy, who had made the same observation on castrated mice in the United States, and who therefore had scientific priority. Courrier also showed that folliculin injected into pregnant females crossed the placenta and reproduced the "genital crisis of the newborn". He also found that amniotic fluid is rich in folliculin. All these discoveries concerning the first ovarian hormone were brought together in a doctoral thesis in medicine defended in 1924. What a medical thesis !
Then, with the help of numerous experiments between 1925 and 1928, Courrier fought for the recognition that the first ovarian hormone discovered, the follicular phase hormone, was not the only one. The hormone of the lutein phase and of the corpus luteum of pregnancy was isolated by W. Allen and G. Corner in 1930.
Robert Courrier's "endocrinologie de la gestation", published in 1945, was a classic, but unfortunately soon sold out. An article published in "Vitamins and Hormones" in 1950, on the relationship between estrogen and progesterone, relates the important studies by Courrier and his collaborators on the functional relationships between the two ovarian hormones.
The third aspect of Robert Courrier's work concerns the action of thyroid hormone on its own secretion. After meticulous and difficult studies, between 1922 and 1928, he concluded that "everything happens as if the thyroid normally secreted its hormone in quantities strictly regulated to the needs of the organism, to such an extent that if the hormone is artificially supplied from outside, the gland enters a state of rest. There seems to be a relationship between the quantity of hormone circulating in the internal environment and glandular activity, a kind of glandular-humoral equilibrium". These sentences, written in 1928, before Ph. Smith's hypophysectomy experiments on rats, opened up completely new perspectives in endocrinology.
Later, in 1944, in collaboration with Frédéric Joliot, Alain Horeau and Pierre Sue, the first radioactive hormone, 131I thyroxine, was obtained at the Collège de France. This created a new means of studying thyroid regulation. Numerous studies of pituitary physiology were subsequently carried out in the laboratory until 1964.
Naturally, this long career was marked by many accolades and honors. Member of the Académie des Sciences in 1944, then Secrétaire perpétuel de cette Académie in 1948, Member of several other academies, Dr honoris causa of numerous foreign universities, Gold Medal of the Académie des Quarante in Rome in 1956 and of the C.N.R.S. in 1964, Robert Courrier earned the respect of all and the attachment that his human qualities earned him.
But he also suffered a great deal. In 1944, his eldest daughter Janine, aged 19, was killed in an allied bombing raid. He also suffered a great deal, silently, when, in August 1980, his wife, who had always been a wise advisor and a constant support, passed away.
In 1938-1939, I had the good fortune to spend a great deal of time with an exceptionally lucid teacher and experimenter, before the years when a number of public-interest duties demanded an ever-increasing share of his time. I have enjoyed his friendship ever since. I would like this Abstract, too incomplete and too bare, of a particularly intense and innovative scientific life, to give you an idea of all that Science and the Collège de France owe to Robert Courrier.
Alfred Jost
