Arthur van Gehuchten

He was professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Leuven until the start of World War I in 1914.

He moved to England and taught biology at Cambridge University until his death.

Van Gehuchten is especially known for his contributions to the theory of neurons.

It is believed that the reason for adding the ‘e’ at the end of the word relates to the interplay between linguistics and phonetics: the final ‘n’ in ‘neuron’ would have been ‘sounded’ in the classical Greek, and also in Waldeyer’s German coinage, and, to do the same in French, there needed to be an ‘e’ placed at the end of the word.

Without this, ‘neuron’ would have rhymed with ‘maison’ and the link with the original Greek would have been lost.