Corneille Heymans

Son of pharmacologist Jan-Frans Heymans, Corneille served as an artillery officer in World War I before completing his medical training at the University of Ghent and studying abroad in Paris, Lausanne, Vienna, and Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Succeeding his father as professor of pharmacology at Ghent in 1930, Heymans performed ingenious cross-circulation experiments demonstrating that specialized chemoreceptors in the carotid and aortic glomus bodies monitor blood oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, sending reflex neural signals to the brainstem to regulate respiration.