CARREL, ALEXIS. - Surgeon and biologist, b. at Ste-Foy-les-Lyon (France) on 28 June 1873, d. at Paris on 5 Nov. 1944. He earned his degrees in science and in medicine at the University of Lyon. In 1912 he entered the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York and remained there until his death, directing its department of experimental surgery.
In 1912 he received the Nobel Prize for physiology and medicine for his results on the suturing of blood vessels and on organ transplants. He collaborated with C. A. Lindbergh in research in which he built a heart with artificial circulation; he also collaborated with Lecompte du Noüy, the latter of whom gave a mathematical basis to the results he had obtained on the rate of healing in relation to the size of the wound and the age of the subject. Among the numerous honorary recognitions for his vast and important scientific output, he was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He deserves special remembrance because he modified and perfected the culture of tissues "in vitro" discovered by Harrison, obtaining results of the greatest importance for both medicine and biology, such as the survival of fibroblasts from embryonic chicken heart for twenty-eight years.
Known throughout the world is his book: Man the Unknown (New York 1935; Italian trans., Milan 1936), which sets forth his experiences and intuitions as a physician and as a man for a better understanding of both nature and human life and vicissitudes. However, it is not free of grave errors concerning God, the spiritual nature of the soul, and true spiritual and supernatural values. Shortly before dying he also wrote The Prayer (New York 1944; Italian trans., Brescia 1947), in which, while praising prayer as a beneficial and healthful element, he has grave errors about its nature. Most recently there appeared posthumously: Le voyage de Lourdes, suivi de fragments de journal et de méditations (Paris 1949; Italian trans., Brescia 1949), and about to appear is: La conduite de la vie, a sequel to Man the Unknown. In these last two works one notices a more vivid drawing near to the truths of the Faith and to the intervention of the supernatural, to the point of making him say, a few weeks before his death: "I want to believe and I believe all that the Catholic Church wants us to believe; I have no difficulty in doing so, because in its Message I find nothing in conflict with the data established by science" (Le voyage de Lourdes..., III, ed. cit.).
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Enrico Urbani