Christiaan Eijkman

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1929

Christiaan Eijkman (Nijkerk, 11 augustus 1858[1] – Utrecht, 5 november 1930[2]%29 was een Nederlands arts, patholoog en Nobelprijswinnaar. Samen met zijn medewerker Gerrit Grijns toonde hij aan dat de ziekte beriberi wordt veroorzaakt door een onvolwaardige voeding. Deze ontdekking lag aan de basis van de ontdekking van vitamines. In 1929 werd aan Eijkman, samen met de Britse biochemicus Frederick Gowland Hopkins, hiervoor de Nobelprijs voor de Fysiologie of Geneeskunde toegekend. Wikipedia

Christiaan Eijkman (11 August 1858 – 5 November 1930) was a Dutch physician and professor of physiology whose demonstration that beriberi is caused by poor diet led to the discovery of vitamins. Together with Sir Frederick Hopkins, he received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Early life and education

Christiaan Eijkman was born on 11 August 1858, at Nijkerk, Netherlands as the seventh child of Christiaan Eijkman, the headmaster of a local school, and Johanna Alida Pool. His elder brother Johann Frederik Eijkman (1851–1915) was also a chemist.

A year later, in 1859, the Eijkman family moved to Zaandam, where his father was appointed head of a newly founded school for advanced elementary education. It was here that Christiaan and his brothers received their early education. In 1875, after taking his preliminary examinations, Eijkman became a student at the Military Medical School of the University of Amsterdam, where he was trained as a medical officer for the Netherlands Indies Army, passing through all his examinations with honours.

From 1879 to 1881, he was an assistant of T. Place, Professor of Physiology, during which time he wrote his thesis On Polarization of the Nerves, which gained him his doctoral degree, with honours, on 13 July 1883.

Career

In 1883, Eijkman left the Netherlands for The Indies, where he was made medical officer of health, first in Semarang, then later at Tjilatjap, a small village on the south coast of Java, and at Padang Sidempoean in Western Sumatra. It was at Tjilatjap that he caught malaria, which later so impaired his health that he, in 1885, had to return to Europe on sick-leave.

For Eijkman this was to prove a lucky event, as it enabled him to work in E. Forster's laboratory in Amsterdam, and also in Robert Koch's bacteriological laboratory in Berlin; here he came into contact with C.A. Pekelharing and C. Winkler, who were visiting the German capital before their departure to the Indies. In this way medical officer Christiaan Eijkman was seconded as assistant to the Pekelharing-Winkler mission, together with his colleague M. B. Romeny. This mission had been sent out by the Dutch Government to conduct investigations into Beriberi, a disease which at that time was causing havoc in that region.

In 1887, Pekelharing and Winkler were recalled, but before their departure Pekelharing proposed to the Governor General that the laboratory which had been temporarily set up for the Commission in the Military Hospital in Batavia should be made permanent. This proposal was readily accepted, and Christiaan Eijkman was appointed its first Director, at the same time being made Director of the "Dokter Djawa School" (Javanese Medical School) which later become University of Indonesia. Thus ended Eijkman's short military career – now he was able to devote himself entirely to science.

Eijkman was Director of the "Geneeskundig Laboratorium" (Medical Laboratory) from 15 January 1888 to 4 March 1896, and during that time he made a number of his most important researches. These dealt first of all with the physiology of people living in tropical regions. He was able to demonstrate that a number of theories had no factual basis. Firstly he proved that in the blood of Europeans living in the tropics the number of red corpuscles, the specific gravity, the serum, and the water content, undergo no change, at least when the blood is not affected by disease which will ultimately lead to anaemia. Comparing the metabolism of the European with that of the native, he found that in the tropics as well in the temperate zone, this is entirely governed by the work carried out. Neither could he find any disparity in respiratory metabolism, perspiration, and temperature regulation. Thus Eijkman put an end to a number of speculations on the acclimatization of Europeans in the tropics which had hitherto necessitated the taking of various precautions.

Awards

In 1907, Eijkman was appointed Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, after having been Correspondent since 1895. The Dutch Government conferred upon him several orders of knighthood, whereas on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his professorship a fund was established to enable the awarding of the Eijkman Medal. But the crown of all his work was the award of the Nobel Prize in 1929.

Eijkman was holder of the John Scott Medal, Philadelphia, and Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. He was also Honorary Fellow of the Royal Sanitary Institute in London.

To honor his dedication, the government of Indonesia named his research center on pathology and bacteriology the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology.

Personal life

In 1883, before his departure to the Indies, Eijkman married Aaltje Wigeri van Edema, who died in 1886. In Batavia, Professor Eijkman married Bertha Julie Louise van der Kemp in 1888; a son, Pieter Hendrik, who became a physician, was born in 1890.