Genetics professor Hans Galgaard has passed away at the age of 87

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons).

Hans Galgaard of Leiden died at the age of 87. Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology and Human Genetics and Dr. became nationally known in the 1990s through several television shows. who – which NOS . Reports.

In understandable language, he was able to explain to the audience what was happening in his field and why laboratory research was so important. He’s done so on TV shows, but also in countless books and articles.

In 1989, in a conversation with VPRO Het Marathoninterview, he explained why he thought information was important. “You have to have time to translate the complex matter of that smaller group into a larger group, because there are not all the dignitaries in the House who understand the scientific supplements of newspapers.”

young professor
Galgaard was born on April 8, 1935 in Leiden “in an environment of construction workers,” as he himself described it. He went to high school. After graduating from high school, he went on to study medicine at Leiden University, where he received his doctorate with distinction in 1962. He then became a lecturer in cell biology at the new Erasmus Medical Center. At the age of 32 he was already a professor and head of the department there.

He is best known for his research into prenatal diagnosis of genetic metabolic diseases. In the mid-1970s, Galgaard became involved in creating the Cooperative Society of Parents and Patients’ Organizations in Congenital and Genetic Disorders (VSOP). He also paid great attention to information.

Ethical dilemmas
According to Erasmus MC, Galjaard gave nearly a thousand lectures on all continents. He and his organization have also contributed to more than fifty television programmes, for example to the NCRV, about new prenatal diagnostic technologies and ethical dilemmas.

He collaborated with Koos Postema on NOS Een Groot Uur U and with Paul Witteman Make All People Unequal. In it, he explained what exactly DNA is and what data genetics research produces.

He said his television career has never stood in the way of science. “Certainly not when you look at the thirty or so awards I’ve received here and in thirteen or fourteen other countries. ‘I’m so spoiled,'” he said in a 1989 Marathon interview.

In 2011 Galjaard created an exhibition for the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam entitled Beauty in Science.

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