Trained in the ULB, pupil of Albert Brachet, Ernest Van Campenhout frequented successively the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), the Yale University and the Montreal University, to settle definitively in the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), where he becomes professor of anatomy, histology and embryology. Despite the fact that his most interest was the autonomic innervation of the digestive tract, he examined a lot of problems, and his severe and rigorous teaching impressed a number of student's generations.