Eugène Gley

He studied physiology with Henri-Étienne Beaunis at the medical school in Nancy, and afterwards worked as an assistant to Étienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904) in Paris.

Later on, he received the title of professeur agrégé, and in 1908 became a professor at the Collège de France.

These glands had been recently discovered as an anatomical entity in 1880, however their importance was not understood at the time.

Gley realized that the cause of tetany after thyroid operations was the inadvertent destruction of the parathyroid glands.

He demonstrated this by removing the parathyroid glands from laboratory animals and witnessing their deaths from tetany.