Julien Fraipont was born in 1857 into a banking family, where he was originally employed. Bored, he eventually became an anatomist at University of Liège. Marcel de Puydt and Maximin Lohest asked him to collaborate in describing the two almost complete Neandertal skeletons that they found in Spy D'Orneau, Belgium, July 1886. His son Charles Praipont was the author of a monograph on the Neandertal child's cranium from Engis, Belgium.
