The life and scientific activities of Daniel Bovet are closely interwoven with the ‘golden years’ of pharmacology, i.e. with the exceptional development of this science from the end of the 1930s to the 1960s. Swiss by birth, French by scientific training and Italian by choice, Bovet was a citizen of Europe and free of any provincialism. Daniel Bovet was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on 23 March 1907. His father, Pierre Bovet, was a professor of psychology at the University of Geneve and co-founder, with E. Claparède, of the Rousseau Institute in Geneva, later directed by Jean Piaget. His French mother, Amy Babut, was less ‘strict’ than his father, whose strong Calvinism and refusal to indulge either himself or his children Bovet often recalled. His secondary education took place in Geneva and in 1927 he graduated in natural sciences at the University of Geneva. Assistant to Professor F. Battelli at the Institute of Physiology, in 1929 he was awarded the Doctorat ès Sciences Naturelles with a thesis on zoology and comparative anatomy supervised by Professor E. Guyenot. In the same year, he joined the Institut Pasteur in Paris, then directed by Emile Roux, having been summoned by Ernest Fourneau, Director of the laboratories of Chémie Thérapeutique, to set up a pharmacological unit there. He was to remain at the Pasteur Institute for nearly 20 years. In Paris, Bovet met Filomena Nitti, daughter of Francesco Saverio Nitti, Prime Minister of Italy in 1919-1920 and exiled during the fascist era. They married in 1938 and Filomena, whose brother Federico worked with Bovet on sulfa drugs, became her husband’s life-long co-worker, sharing each step of his scientific career.
From fish to modern humans - comparative anatomy, homologies and evolution of the head and neck musculature