Amédée Borrel

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Amédée Borrel (1867-1936) was a French biologist who was born in Cazouls-lès-Béziers. He studied natural sciences at the University of Montpellier, where he earned his degree in 1890. In 1919 he attained the chair of bacteriology at the University of Strasbourg.

From 1892 until 1895, Borrel worked in the laboratory of Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff (1845-1916) at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Here he performed research of tuberculosis, and with Alexandre Yersin (1863-1943) and Léon Charles Albert Calmette (1863-1933) worked on a vaccine against bubonic plague. With Yersin and Calmette, he co-published the treatise Le microbe de la peste à bubons regarding the plague bacillus. Borrel is also credited for pioneer work concerning the viral theory of cancer.

A genus of bacteria called Borrelia is named after Amédée Borrel, as are Borrel bodies, which are tiny virus-containing granules that cluster to form Bollinger bodies, which in turn are found in tissue cells of fowlpox. Bollinger bodies are named after German pathologist Otto Bollinger (1843-1909). During World War I, Borrel developed one of the earliest known gas masks.