Édouard Joseph Louis Marie Van Beneden (5 March 1846 in Leuven – 28 April 1910 in Liège) was a Belgian embryologist, cytologist and marine biologist.

In this work he discovered how chromosomes organized meiosis (the production of gametes).

He is son of Pierre-Joseph Van Beneden, a zoologist and paleontologist.

Van Beneden elucidated, together with Walther Flemming and Eduard Strasburger, the essential facts of mitosis, where, in contrast to meiosis, there is a qualitative and quantitative equality of chromosome distribution to daughter cells.

He introduced two important terms into evolutionary biology and ecology: mutualism and commensalism.