I translated this from French to English as best as I could from a Quebec website on Dr. Fortier.
I oriented myself towards the biomedical research because this is the most wonderful intellectual adventure in which I could be involved myself. For me, to attack itself to the solution of a bit of the mystery of life is a fascinating quest. For the complexity of a single living cell is, without protests, bigger than the one of the body of the cosmos, declares Claude Fortier. The one to that one has the endocrinology leap to the Quebec expresss thus all sound wonder with regard to the research. His scientific curiosity finds his expression in the interaction study between the emotions, the functioning of the brain and the hormonal checks. Its works will open the way to the discovery of the sector of not at all modern physiology that is the neuroendocrinologie. Jacques Genest specifies besides to his subject that one can summarize the whole life of Claude Fortier while saying that it was literally a giant on the scientific, medical plan and intellectual and that it gave all sound energy to the progress of the science.
The exploration of the modern physiology
Student in medicine, Claude Fortier already perceives in the years 40, check importance exercised by the nervous system on the endocrine glands, an unexplored domain to the era. The orientation of research of the professor specifies himself at the time of his stay to the laboratory of Hans Selye, researcher of the University of become Montreal leader in the anxiety study. This training allows the doctor Fortier to launch truly his career. It elaborates, with its colleagues (of which the doctor Roger Guillemin, price Nobel of physiology and of medicine in 1977), biological principles that drive to the creation of the neuroendocrinologie. Indeed, it is the one of the all first researchers, to the world-wide ladder, to show clearly influences it sensory stimuli (the sound, the light) and emotional stimuli (anger, the fear, frustration) on the secretion of ACTH, commonly called the "anxiety hormone.
Claude Fortier tries from that time to put in evidence the underlying mechanism to such reactions, which the brings to work to the University of London, in collaboration with the professor Geoffrey W. Harris, the one of the rare specialists of the neuroendocrinologie. The works of the two researchers, that concern the brain hormones, today are considered as constituent classics bases it of a better comprehension of the endocrinal systems.
The fame continually growing the doctor Fortier attracts the attention of the environments of the research. One invites it thus to direct the first laboratory of neuroendocrinologie in America to the University of Baylor, to the Texas, where it is equally professor. It there rediscovers his colleague, Roger Guillemin, with that it elaborates, among others, which is recognized then as the better biological essay allowing measuring the anxiety hormone.
The research in endocrinology
The doctor Fortier plays a role of first importance in the beginnings of the neuroendocrinologie to the international ladder: Claude Fortier awakened with the young researchers the flame of the biomedical research in several domains, what's more of the one of the endocrinology that became today a sector of excellence of the research to the Quebec, recognizes the doctor Maurice Norman, Department of physiology of the University Laval. This is besides the one of the objectives of the professor, to his return to the Quebec in 1960, to fill the serious gaps of the biomedical research. For there to arrive, it sets up the Laboratory of endocrinology of the Faculty of medicine of the University Laval. It assumes equally for twenty years the direction of the Department of physiology, posts occupied since 1990 by the doctor Fernand Labrie, founder and current director since 1982 of the Center of research of the hospital Center of the University Laval (CHUL) and one of the more brilliant students of Claude Fortier.
The laboratory of Claude Fortier, because of his fame growing, welcomes quickly researchers of all origins. This period is doubtless the most fertile one of the career of the researcher. Its works, turned towards the big problems of the endocrinology, furnish new interpretations of the relations between the central nervous systems and endocrinal. These observations allow elucidating several important aspects of the regulating mechanisms of the endocrine functions as well as interactions between these glands. In addition, it shows hormonal influences on the behavior and on the aptitude to apprenticeship, attracting thus the attention on the world-wide plan.
Fascinated basic research, Claude Fortier is interested before all to the knowledge acquisition. The principles physiologiques basic that it releases by experimentation find nevertheless several applications. Thus, certain aspects of its works on the protein role securing plasma, notably the transcortine, in hormonal adjustments, constitute of the non negligible stakes of the recent progress accomplish in the hormonal treatment of the cancer of the prostate.
The role of the data processing in the domain of the biomedical research
The resourceful spirit characterizing Claude Fortier reveals itself all particularly in the middle of the years 60, when it introduces the data processing within the biomedical research, notably in modern physiology. It uses it not only for the analysis of the experimental data, but also for the elaboration of mathematical models of the dynamics of the secretion of various hormones and for the simulation of mechanisms of endocrinal regulation. To the era, this approach shows a big originality.
Scientific engaged and deeply preoccupied by the place of the research in the corporation, the doctor Fortier, alongside its scientific works, contributes to the political ones and to the orientations of the medical research to the country by the mediated one numerous responsibilities that it assumes in the biggest provincial scientific organisms and national. During all these years of scientific activities marked to the seal of the dynamism and wonder, it transmits to its successors the taste of the basic research. Even after his arisen death April 22 1986, his influence perpetuates itself in the international recognition of the sector of excellence that became the Quebec endocrinology.
