Ranvier was born and studied medicine at Lyon, graduating in 1865 from the Ecole Préparatoire de Médecine et de Pharmacie. He moved to Paris after receiving the internship of Parisian hospitals. Here he founded a small private research laboratory on Rue Christine along with fellow intern Victor André Cornil, and together they later offered a course in histology to medical students which involved the careful examination of tissues under a microscope. Their course was unique in the time as microscopy had not been viewed favourably in medicine especially by Henri Ducrotay de Blainville (1777-1850) and Auguste Comte (1798-1857). Their histology course material became an influential textbook on histopathology. In 1867, Ranvier entered the Collège de France and worked as an assistant to Claude Bernard. In 1875, he was appointed to its chair of general anatomy.[1]