Marcelle de Heredia Lapicque (17 July 1873 – 1962) was a French neurophysiologist known for her research on

nerve impulses An action potential (also known as a nerve impulse or "spike" when in a neuron) is a series of quick changes in voltage across a cell membrane. An action potential occurs when the membrane potential of a specific cell rapidly rises and falls. ...

(

chronaxie Chronaxie is the minimum time required for an electric current double the strength of the rheobase to stimulate a muscle or a neuron. Rheobase is the lowest intensity with indefinite pulse duration which just stimulated muscles or nerves. Chronax ...

) and the effects of poisons, especially

strychnine Strychnine (, , American English, US chiefly ) is a highly toxicity, toxic, colorless, bitter, crystalline alkaloid used as a pesticide, particularly for killing small vertebrates such as birds and rodents. Strychnine, when inhaled, swallowed, ...

, on chronaxie. She supervised the Laboratoire des Hautes-Études General Physiology laboratory, and published over eighty papers.

Life

Lapicque was born on 17 July 1873 in Paris. Her father was a landowner and Paris municipal councillor, French politician

Severiano de Heredia Severiano de Heredia (8 November 1836 – 9 February 1901) was a Cuban-born biracial politician, a freemason, a left-wing republican, naturalized as French in 1870, who was president of the municipal council of Paris from 1 August 1879 to 12 Feb ...

. She studied science at the University of Paris, and was a fellow student of

Louis Lapicque Louis Édouard Lapicque (1 August 1866 – 6 December 1952) was a French neuroscientist, socialist activist, antiboulangist, dreyfusard and freemason who was very influential in the early 20th century. One of his main contributions was to propos ...

, who she had a son with in 1898, although they were not married until 1902. Lapicque completed her dissertation on nerve impulses, in which she was supervised by her husband. She was in charge of the Laboratoire des Hautes-Études General Physiology laboratory until her death. Marcelle Lapicque, though overshadowed in histories of science by her husband, was an influential scientist in her own right, publishing many papers as sole author. Louis Lapicque "insisted on the importance of his wife as equal co-worker in all his research".. In total Lapicque published eighty papers with her husband and his students, but her name is not remembered as the theories of chronaxie grew unpopular. She was a member of the

Société de Biologie The Société de biologie () is a learned society founded in Paris in 1848. The society was conceived during the French Revolution of 1848. The members of the society held regular meetings and published the proceedings in a new scientific journal. ...

, and published often their Bulletin. Lapicque's son Charles went on to become an engineer and a painter, and married the daughter of atomic scientist

Jean Perrin Jean Baptiste Perrin (; 30 September 1870 – 17 April 1942) was a French atomic physicist who, in his studies of the Brownian motion of minute particles suspended in liquids (sedimentation equilibrium), verified Albert Einstein's explanation o ...

. Lapicque died around 1962. She continued to run the laboratory up until her death, even after her husband died in 1952.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lapicque, Marcelle French neuroscientists French women scientists French women neuroscientists French people of Dominican Republic descent 1873 births 1960 deaths