He studied at the Jesuit College of Saint Barbara and then at Ghent University, where he obtained a doctor's degree in 1920.

He used a similar experiment to demonstrate the role of peripheral chemoreceptors in respiratory regulation, for which he received his Nobel Prize.

[3] The group of physiopharmacologists working under Heymans at Ghent University were looking for the anatomical basis of the respiratory reflex at the carotid sinus.

It was necessary that the Spanish neurohistologist Fernando de Castro Rodríguez (1898–1967) described in detail the innervation of the aorta-carotid region, circumscribing the presence of baroreceptors to the carotid sinus, but that of chemoreceptors to the carotid body, for the Belgian group to move their focus from the first to the very small second structure to physiologically demonstrate the nature and function of the first blood chemoreceptors.

[4] The contribution of the young De Castro, maybe the last direct disciple of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934; awarded the 1906 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine) was overlooked at the time, but it was later recognized[citation needed] that he deserved to share the Nobel Prize with Heymans, his colleague and friend.