A pioneer of experimental mammalian embryology: Jacques Mulnard.

Since October of 1987, Jacques Mulnard has been Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. He arrived as a student in 1939 and achieved a brilliant record in his medical studies. The difficult circumstances of the war were soon to reveal his attachment to his Institution and his exceptional qualities as a pedagogue and humanist. During his third year in medical school, the University closed down. Unlike many students who quite understandably chose to leave. Mulnard decided to continue his training in Brussels and to actively participate, despite the enormous risks, in the organization of clandestine courses. So at the age of 21. there he was, teaching anatomy and embryology to students a year younger than he while successfully passing his thirdand fourth-year exams before the State Board of Examiners. In 1945, as he was finishing his studies in .his. University which had reopened one year earlier, Jacques Mulnard took part in the British medical mission to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Although his sense of decency drew a curtain of silence over this dramatic episode in his career, it is reasonable to believe that this trying mission reinforced his natural determination to defendjustice and freedom of expression and to firmly reject all forms of intolerance. He was to place this determination at the service of the Faculty of Medicine and of the whole University when, just after the troubles in 1968, he was called upon to occupy a position of responsibility and decision. The very peculiar conditions under which he completed his studies had prevented him from spending much time in a research laboratory like all of the other embryologists of the Brussels school. And unlike them, Jacques Mulnard felt a strong attraction towards HENRI ALEXANDRE'