Justin Marie Jolly

Justin Marie Jolly studied in Paris and obtained his doctorate at that university in 1898. He interned with Paul Georges Dieulafoy (1839-1911) but right from the beginning was anxious to pursue a career in the laboratory. He entered the Collège de France where he studied with Louis Antoine Ranvier (1835-1922) and Louis-Charles Malassez (1842-1909), and from them he learnt histological techniques and the relationship of histology to physiology. He was the first of the haematologists in France to devote his studies to living tissue and to attempt to relate the morphology with the physiology and pathology.

Jolly was Chef du laboratoire at the medical clinic in the Hôtel-Dieu, and director of the histological laboratory at the École des Hautes Etudes.

From 1925 to 1940, when he retired, he was professor at the Collège de France. He studied the development and differentiation of the red and white cells and also of the lymphatic system, and in 1913 and 1917 presented the first films displaying mitosis in living cells, using microscopic moving pictures. Working with some members of the Curie Institute, Claude Regaud (1843-1940) and his pupil Antoine Marcellin Lacassagne (1884-1971), he studied the effects of radiation of leukocytes and showed that a reduction in oxygen resulted in a strong inhibition of radio-sensitivity.

In 1923 he published his book Technical treatise of haematology which became a classical book in France and was used by innumerable students there. He was on of the founders of the Revue d’hématologie.